Of the hundreds of footballs I have booted in the prelude to this kick, of the hooks and slices and slips and mis-hits, none has been like this. In fact, in the history of the NFL, no one has likely mangled a kick this badly. "OOOOoooooHHHHhhhhh!" the crowd and players cry as one. Amid the noise, I hear a single scream of anguish.

The ball flies high enough and far enough but misses left. The bigger problem is how it misses. Rather than tumbling neatly end over end, as textbook kicks do, it's a line drive spiral. A spiral! I drop to the ground as if shot and bury my helmeted forehead in the grass. The horn sounds. While the team jogs past my carcass, Jason Elam helps me up. Snapper Mike Leach pats me on the back. Defensive lineman Demetrin Veal drapes an arm around my shoulders and says it'll be okay.

I feel as if I have let my teammates down — at 30 minutes per player, my misses cost them a total of 45 hours of freedom — and have let myself down. That I had never before kicked a football over an offensive line and a full defense is more excuse than pertinent detail. I wanted to validate my presence. Instead, I failed publicly and spectacularly.

Amid a pulsing dance beat, I do a perp walk through the locker room. The reviews are not good. Linebacker Keith Burns: "I was thoroughly disgusted." Center Tom Nalen: "Thanks for f---ing us." Tight end Chad Mustard: "S--- the bed! Call housecleaning! We need new sheets!" Quarterback Jake Plummer: "Don't ... come near me. Get out of here."

But when the abuse subsides, players seize on my failure as a happy confirmation of their reality. My going down in an intergalactic fireball illuminates their struggles to play football — the impossible expectation of perfection, the daily threat of being cut, the constant risk of crippling injury. I was lucky to have had just a half hour of meetings riding on my performance and not my job. "Welcome to our world," Nick Ferguson says.

Outside the showers, fullback Kyle Johnson is wearing a white towel and his Broncos ID, waiting to take a mandatory drug test.

"How was that for pressure?" he asks.

"More than anything I've felt in my life," I reply.

"That's what it's like every play of every game. It'll keep you up at night — if you let it."

I expect it to. I ask Shanahan whether he'll give me another chance. He says he will.

Adapted from "A Few Seconds of Panic" by Stefan Fatsis. Copyright 2008 by Stefan Fatsis. Published by The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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