From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Mike Vanderjagt (born March 24, 1970 in Oakville, Ontario) is a Canadian NFL player who is the placekicker for the Indianapolis Colts.
He was a four-sport star (football, basketball, soccer, and track) at Oakville's White Oaks High School, and originally enrolled at Michigan State University as a quarterback in 1988. However, he left Michigan State for a California junior college, where he punted and played quarterback. He returned to major-college football as a punter and placekicker at West Virginia University, starring in both roles in 1991 and 1992.
After graduating from WVU in 1993, he returned to Canada and started a career in the CFL. He played briefly for the Saskatchewan Roughriders in 1993. He did not play in 1994 or 1995. Vanderjagt returned to the league in 1996 with the Toronto Argonauts, serving as the regular placekicker and punter. He led the CFL in yardage per punt in 1997, and the Argos won the Grey Cup in both 1996 and 1997.
In 1998, Vanderjagt crossed the border and joined the Colts, and has been a fixture as the club's placekicker ever since. He led the NFL in scoring in 1999, and is now the most accurate field-goal kicker in the league's history (174-198, 87.9% at the end of the 2003 season).
After the 2002 season, Vanderjagt put himself in the center of a media firestorm in an interview for the Canadian cable sports network The Score. He said that Colts quarterback Peyton Manning needed to show more emotion, and implied that head coach Tony Dungy was too placid and not enough of a motivator. He apologized several days later for his remarks, but Manning later fired back at him in a sideline interview at the Pro Bowl (see Manning's article for his response to Vanderjagt). After some offseason tension, all parties settled their differences.
Vanderjagt had a spectacular 2003 season, becoming the first kicker in the league's history to go an entire season without missing a field goal or point-after attempt. In the process, he made his first Pro Bowl. He finished the regular season 37 for 37 in field goals and 46 for 46 in PATs. He was also perfect on three field-goal attempts and 12 PATs in the postseason. Vanderjagt is currently on a streak of 41 consecutive successful field goal attempts, the longest in NFL history (the league does not include postseason games when compiling streaks).
