INDIANAPOLIS--Colts kicker Mike Vanderjagt is a free agent this year and is looking forward to “shaking things up” with his new team. Whoever signs him will get a kicker, a leader, a coach, a dad, and a fearless warrior who will challenge his teammates week in and week out.

“I’m really looking forward to starting a new chapter in my career and signing on with another team,” said Vanderjagt, the most accurate kicker in league history. “Who will it be? Green Bay? Atlanta? Cleveland? Personally I’d prefer Oakland because I think I would fit in with their bad-boy image. Yea, I know what you’re thinking. ‘He’s a kicker. He can’t be a bad boy.’ Well, tell that to my old teammates in Indianapolis. They thought I was so bad they couldn’t even stand to be around me.”

Vanderjagt made a name for himself in Indianapolis with his brash personality and take-no-prisoners attitude. He doesn’t see himself as a kicker, but as a football player.

“Most kickers aren’t really football players. I mean, let’s be honest here,” Vanderjagt said. “Most of them are little pussies who stand around on the sidelines, don’t lift any weights, and are afraid to get in their teammates faces when they’re not putting forth their best effort. Not me, pal. Just ask Peyton Manning. If he looked like his head wasn’t in the game I’d be right there on the sideline in his face. I’m like the Ray Lewis of kickers.”

The Atlanta Falcons, one of the teams that may be in the market for a kicker, could use somebody like Vanderjagt to light a fire under them, the kicker says.

“I followed the Falcons a lot last year,” he said. “One thing I thought was really missing, especially early in the season, was some veteran leadership. Not just leadership – someone to go into the locker room, look a player in the eye and read him the riot act. That’s what you get when you sign a Mike Vanderjagt. You get someone to restore a sense of accountability to the locker room.”

Vanderjagt was a controversial figure in Indianapolis, especially when he openly criticized star quarterback Peyton Manning after the 2002 playoffs, claiming he was too placid and timid to succeed in the NFL. Manning responded by calling Vanderjagt “an idiot” and saying he was “liquored up.”

The two have since patched things up, but Manning didn’t seem too disappointed to hear that his kicker was a free agent.

“Mike’s a great kicker but I think we can live without him,” Manning said in a telephone interview yesterday. “He was very, very accurate and we’ll miss that, but he could be a handful, too. Let’s just say that he isn’t afraid to speak his mind, which is a unique quality for a kicker. That’s because kickers should be afraid to speak their minds because nobody, I mean nobody, wants to hear what they have to say.”

The Green Bay Packers are also looking to sign a kicker and head coach Mike McCarthy is tempted by Vanderjagt’s track record for accuracy. He does have reservations, however, about his personality.

“You get a mixed bag with Mike,” said McCarthy, who took over in Green Bay when Mike Sherman was fired. “On the one hand he’s kind of an asshole. He thinks he’s an actual football player, which he’s not, and he thinks he’s allowed to get in his teammates’ faces, which he’s not. On the other hand he’s about as accurate as they come – for the most part. He did miss a really big kick in the playoffs that would have given his team the victory. But in his defense it was really windy that day. Yea, I know, the Colts play indoors. I’m just practicing for when he gets here and I have to make excuses for him.”

  Copyright 2006, The Brushback - Do not reprint without permission. This article is satire and is not intended as actual news.

Copyright 2005, The Brushback - Do not reprint without permission. This article is satire and is not intended as actual news.