Nate Kaeding Quotations

I was lucky enough to get it loosened up (thanks to a medicinal shot). It was definitely there, but I could still kick on it. With some good treatment on it, it shouldn't be any problem.

I think this is behind me now. Something I learned the last six months and this last week especially is that I have to be my biggest fan,

There is nothing I can do to ever make up for that kick, ... But that happened. I take responsibility for that. In the future there are going to be opportunities, and I look forward to that.

You have to have a good perspective, not just on football, but on life. You really have to have your life in order in terms of what's important to you. I had to understand that football was important to me, but it wasn't my life.

There's only one thing worse than being a rookie; that's being a rookie kicker.

A couple guys on the team joked about it, and coach maybe came up to me and joked about it, ... It really wasn't too much of a focal point on the team, but it was a laughable matter to me. It just played right into the way we were approaching the game -- 'We're nobodies, we're just these small-town guys from Iowa.'

I've kicked hundreds of balls in the rain before, there's no excuse for it.

It was probably just a slip on his part. I have no idea what he was thinking or what he was trying to say. If it was any sort of gauge on their preparedness for the game, I think we went ahead and reconfirmed those thoughts out on the football field against them in that bowl game.

It was probably just a slip on his part, ... I have no idea what he was thinking or what he was trying to say. If it was any sort of gauge on their preparedness for the game, I think we went ahead and reconfirmed those thoughts out on the football field against them in that bowl game.

It's tough enough to wait six days for another chance. I had to wait eight months.

It's not about what I'm going to say or how they're going to act toward me or what the coaches are going to say. I've got to go out and make the kicks. It's about what I do in those couple opportunities I get on Sunday.

I look back at my days at Iowa, and we walked out on the football field with those guys, and we had no doubt we were going to win. It didn't matter what anyone was saying or doing. We walked out there knowing what we had was good enough to win. That's a great feeling.

Granted it's preseason or what have you, but I can't remember giving that performance going back to Pee Wee League or Little League, whatever you want to call it. I can't recall playing that poorly in that short amount of time in any sort of game. I've set a difficult course for myself the next couple weeks, but I'm not one to back down from it.

Everybody knows you're going to miss some. It's just the reality and the probability of it. It's the ultimate paradox for a kicker. You go out expecting to make every kick, but you also know it's probably not going to happen. So you have these two conflicting thoughts and realities. The really good kickers are the ones who can process that information. That's what I'm learning to do.