By JEFF LEGWOLD
The Tennessean

OAKLAND, Calif. - Nobody knows how to take the long way around more than Joe Nedney.

In helping the Tennessee Titans defeat the Pittsburgh Steelers last Saturday, Nedney made a kick that didn't count, watched fireworks go off over the stadium, then he missed a kick that didn't count.

Then he made a kick that did count, got the win, told a joke, got ripped for the joke, apologized for the joke and then tried to move on. And that was all before Monday evening.

So that has to be just about the strangest week of Nedney's professional life, right?

"No, not really," Nedney said. "I've kicked a lot to get to this point."

Nedney, in his second season as the Titans kicker of choice, has already tasted the finality of the NFL's postseason with last Saturday's wild finish.

In the space of minutes he had a miss, was the reason for a penalty on Pittsburgh's Dewayne Washington and made the 26-yard game-winner that put the Titans in Sunday's AFC Championship Game against the Raiders.

"I got a second chance," Nedney said. "And I know second chances are rare things, that I may have used mine up."

Nedney knows all about making second chances for himself, for he is a self-made exercise in perseverance. He had no formal training as a place-kicker until he got to the NFL, the Titans are his eighth NFL team and last Saturday was his first playoff game.

"But the reason he's here," Titans' coach Jeff Fisher said, "is because we felt he was one of those guys who would want to win the game at the end."

This is a guy who was a wide receiver at Santa Teresa (Calif.) High School until a collapsed lung in the summer before his junior year forced him to consider something else to stay on the field.

"I was born with air pockets in my lung tissue, basically weak spots. They say it's common in tall, lean people," Nedney said. "My junior year was the third time that had happened in the span of a year, so I had to have surgery to repair it right before football season. They had to separate my rib cage, pull it apart to go in there and basically re-condition the weak side of the lung to make sure the lung tissue was strong enough."

The surgery, which left a six-inch scar on the left side of his torso, was a success, but doctors told him no contact for at least two months.

So, Nedney, who had played youth soccer, decided he would kick. And the same thing that would attract coaches to the now 6-foot-5, 225-pounder - Nedney's immensely powerful left leg - was plainly evident then.

He kicked his way to San Jose State, where he launched plenty of unguided football missiles. He was just 39-of-70 on field goals and missed 13 extra points.

"I was horrible. I was all over the place," Nedney said. "You knew the ball was going a mile, you just didn't know which mile. I just went out there and kind of winged it. I just lined up and started kicking it and everybody went, 'holy cow.' "

It wasn't until a stint with the Miami Dolphins in 1995 and 1996 that he got things under control.

Special teams' coach Mike Westhoff, now in the same position with the New York Jets, showed Nedney how to be a professional kicker. He cut Nedney's inconsistent, three-step approach to a more conventional two-step look.

But it would be three more teams and four more years before Nedney had his breakout season. Kicking as a fill-in for the Denver Broncos and the Carolina Panthers in 2000, he was 34-of-38.

The Titans signed him in the wake of that season.

"What he has is leg strength," Fisher said. "It's like a home run hitter who has to learn how to hit base hits. He's got giant range and he has had to learn to be accurate. That takes patience and it takes discipline."

On Sunday, Nedney may kick with a chance at the Super Bowl in the balance. The fact that the opportunity might come against one of his former teams, the Oakland Raiders, is certainly not lost on him.

The Raiders cut Nedney twice. And he was on a European vacation with his wife and a bag of footballs when he found out the Raiders used a first-round pick to select their current kicker, Sebastian Janikowski, in April 2000.

"I was their kicker and I was kicking in parks in England, Italy, I was kicking all over Europe to try and stay in shape," Nedney said. "My wife even took this great picture of me kicking in a field right next to the leaning tower of Pisa. But I called home to see how everything was going and my parents were just silent. That's how I found out they had drafted Janikowski.

"Most couples go to a romantic dinner in Europe to gaze into each other's eyes. My wife and I were sitting at the table that night looking at each other like, 'What just happened?' So, no, the fireworks last Saturday weren't that big a deal."

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Jeff Legwold covers the NFL for The Tennessean. He can be reached at (615) 259-8352 or jlegwold@tennessean.com

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