{"id":214134,"date":"2025-09-10T00:11:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T00:11:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/214134\/"},"modified":"2025-09-10T00:11:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T00:11:12","slug":"he-was-coaching-youth-football-four-days-later-matt-praters-kick-won-the-bills-ravens-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/214134\/","title":{"rendered":"He was coaching youth football. Four days later, Matt Prater’s kick won the Bills-Ravens game"},"content":{"rendered":"

The last time Adam NeVille, the president of the San Tan Youth Football League, saw Matt Prater in person was Tuesday night, on a football field in their southeastern Phoenix suburb. <\/p>\n

Prater, one of the league\u2019s volunteer assistant coaches, was helping out with his son\u2019s team in the 9-to-11-year-old division and was uniquely qualified for the role. Through last season he had played in every NFL season since 2007 as a kicker, including the last four with the Arizona Cardinals, and even held the league\u2019s record for most field goals over 50 yards. <\/p>\n

But when NeVille and Prater saw each other last week at practice, there was a real question as to whether Prater would be playing a 19th season at all. The day before, all 32 of the league\u2019s teams had finalized their 53-man active rosters, and Prater was still a free agent.<\/p>\n

\"JoshBuffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen, right, with Matt Prater.Tina MacIntyre-Yee \/ Democrat and Chronicle via USA Today Network<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was playing center, running the offense for his son\u2019s team,\u201d NeVille said. \u201cAnd next thing you know he\u2019s telling me he\u2019s got to take a new gig.\u201d<\/p>\n

That new gig came from the Buffalo Bills, a Super Bowl contender whose starting kicker had just injured himself. Prater was writing out a practice plan for his son\u2019s team when he got word he would be signed by the Bills. After a red-eye flight from Arizona, the 41-year-old Prater landed in Buffalo, New York, before 7 a.m. Thursday. Talk about good first impressions at a new job: By 11 p.m. Sunday, he\u2019d kicked the game-winning field goal to open the Bills\u2019 season with a 41-40 victory over Baltimore <\/a>that may stand as one of the season\u2019s most improbable comebacks.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s such a good dude. I\u2019ve been texting him this morning because of obviously what happened last night,\u201d NeVille said Monday. \u201cHe\u2019s like, \u2018This is crazy.\u2019 I\u2019m like, \u2018This is a Disney story!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The season-opening game was billed as a showdown between juggernaut teams who will be in each other\u2019s way all season while battling for the AFC championship. It lived up to the anticipation because of the performances of its marquee superstars \u2014 Bills quarterback Josh Allen, the league’s defending most valuable player and his Ravens counterpart Lamar Jackson. Baltimore\u2019s lead grew to as much as 15 points early in the fourth quarter, only to see it reduced to just 2 with 86 seconds left, when Buffalo got the ball back. <\/p>\n

On the sideline, Prater set up a ball onto a tee in front of a net and began warming up for a would-be game-winning kick. The Bills were placing their trust in a player with a career accuracy of just under 84% but who was mistaken as a nonplayer when he joined the team only three days earlier.<\/p>\n

“He walks into the special teams meeting and I thought, \u2018We got a new coach,\u2019\u201d tight end Jackson Hawes told reporters <\/a>of his reaction first seeing Prater, the second-oldest player on an active roster this season. <\/p>\n

\u201cHonestly, I met him in the locker room two days ago,\u201d Allen said after the game<\/a>. \u201cHe showed me a video of his son playing quarterback, that\u2019s how we met. And today before the game, he comes up to me in the locker room before he even [took] the field. He just said, \u2018Hey, I promise you I\u2019m going to give you everything I got tonight.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Prater did as he promised, nailing the kick as time expired, to send Buffalo\u2019s stadium into a pulsating cacophony of celebration.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m still on cloud nine,\u201d Prater said after the game. <\/p>\n

Addressing Bills players in the locker room late Sunday night, Buffalo coach Sean McDermott threw an arm around Prater while giving him the game ball in front of cheering teammates.<\/p>\n

“First of all, he’s almost as old as I am,” McDermott, 51, told players. “And his legs are smaller than mine, right. But we are so proud to have you on Buffalo, on that kick right there. Welcome to Buffalo.”<\/p>\n

Prater, 41, said his pregame talk with Allen was \u201cjust something I wanted to tell him. ‘I know we don\u2019t know each other that well yet but I just want to let you know, I know I just got here, and it may not be perfect right now, but I\u2019m going to do everything I can to try to be perfect to help this team win while I\u2019m here.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Prater isn\u2019t the only person connected to the San Tan youth league in Queen Creek, Arizona, on an NFL roster this season. The league\u2019s most famous alumnus is Brock Purdy, who before he inked a $265 million extension this summer as the San Francisco\u2019 49ers’ starting quarterback, learned the position while tossing the ball around in the league. A volunteer coach going on to play in the NFL was a new one, however, NeVille said. <\/p>\n

When he hosted signups for the league season last month, as NFL training camps were well under way, NeVille said he checked in with Prater about whether he’d heard interest from NFL teams. The kicker\u2019s response, according to Neville: \u201cWe\u2019ll see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prater said he\u2019d worked out with a local snapper and holder during the offseason to stay as game-ready as possible despite his free-agency limbo. But otherwise he\u2019d become, in his own words, a full-time dad whose routine included dropping off and picking up his kids from school, then taking them to gymnastics, dance and football practices. <\/p>\n

\u201cMatt is super down to earth,\u201d NeVille said. \u201cKids probably don\u2019t recognize the gravity of who this guy is.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Bills\u2019 starting kicker, Tyler Bass, will miss at least four games after being placed on injured reserve after dealing with a hip\/groin injury. Yet there is no guarantee yet that Prater, who started the team\u2019s season with a bang, will still be needed during a potentially deep postseason run. But for the time being, one youth football team in Arizona is down an assistant.<\/p>\n

\u201cI kind of passed off those duties,\u201d Prater said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The last time Adam NeVille, the president of the San Tan Youth Football League, saw Matt Prater in…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":214135,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[1232,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-214134","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-nfl","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115177107532089090","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}