Dolphins Hall of Fame quarterback Dan Marino was kidnapped by a deranged field goal kicker in the comedy classic Ace Ventura: Pet Detective because he held the football for his kicks with the laces pointing in, instead of out.
Fictitious kicker Ray Finkle missed the potential winning field goal to lose the Super Bowl and then plotted to kill Marino, while constantly screaming: “Laces out, Dan!”
The zany Jim Carrey movie exaggerated the relationship between the holder and kicker, but not by much. The hold is a critical element to the success of a kicker and his team.
Don’t expect new Dolphins kicker Jay Feely to go quite that far if his holder botches a snap or places the ball down incorrectly. Right now, Feely would settle on just knowing his holder’s identity.
Former Dolphins punter/holder Donnie Jones is with the St. Louis Rams, so the punting job is basically up for grabs between rookie Brandon Fields and Ryan Flinn.
Dolphins coach Cam Cameron and special teams assistant coach Steve Hoffman prefer punters do the holding, but there is a small chance it could come down to the backup quarterback, Cleo Lemon or rookie John Beck, and neither has much experience.
“The toughest thing is we don’t know who the punter is going to be, and we don’t know who the backup quarterback is, so we can’t just say, ‘Here’s the guy, let’s go work at this position,'” Feely said. “Ideally, when you go into training camp you want to know exactly what you’re doing and don’t want to be thinking about it.
“Whether it’s punting, kicking or holding technique, you go in there and refine it to make it a muscle memory.
“But my job is to kick the ball wherever that ball is put down. I don’t worry about that too much. There are no Ray Finkles down here.”
That said, Hoffman and Feely are sticklers for details, and both break down the three-part play from snapper John Denney to the hold and kick to a 1.2- to 1.5-second step-by-step process that is rehearsed over and over.
“It’s definitely an art,” Hoffman said. “If there’s ever a miss we’ve got to find a way to make sure it’s not because the snap or hold wasn’t good.”
Feely realizes how his career is linked to his holder.
“The reality is the holder could make me miss every single kick if he wanted to without anybody knowing it,” Feely said. “He could put it up two inches or lean it a certain way. I tell them to put the ball straight up and down so they don’t have any variables that way, and if I need to adjust for the wind, then I’ll adjust.”
Fields is working on being as far away from the ball as possible to present Feely with a clean look.
“I’ve been crouched over the ball too much, so he’s trying to get me to back away from it so Jay doesn’t see my big body,” said Fields, who is 6 feet 5 and 235 pounds.
Denney also would like to know who his holder will be, so he can also develop a rapport with him.
“Each holder has a different way of getting in their stance, and the way they hold their hand out at the point which they catch the ball,” Denney said. “Flinn has more extension, but we’re talking inches. But it’s a game of inches.”
Flinn realizes that trust issues aren’t just relegated to Lucy yanking the ball away from frustrated kicker Charlie Brown at the last second in the Peanuts cartoon strip.
“There’s a huge trust issue between the snapper, holder and kicker, so I try to develop a relationship off the field as well,” said Flinn, who has held at Central Florida, and also briefly with the Atlanta Falcons and Dallas Cowboys, where he first worked with Hoffman.
“I trust John enough to know that I’m not going to dive all over the place or worry about the laces coming right back at me so I’d have to spin them all around,” he said, “I know it’s going to be there 19 out of 20 times.”
Hoffman teaches holders the same routine so that each one is interchangeable in case of an in-game injury.
“I always want the kicker to be comfortable with his holder,” Hoffman said. “The best holders have great hands, long arms and are calm. And they have to want to do it.”
Whoever the Dolphins’ holder is, they all realize the significance of a seemingly routine act on the football field. Just ask Dallas Pro Bowl quarterback Tony Romo, whose botched hold on a routine 19-yard field goal ended the Cowboys’ postseason.
“As specialists, everything we do is amplified,” said Flinn, a former teammate of Romo. “If Jay makes the game-winning 50-yard kick, he gets the headlines and we all celebrate. If Jay misses a kick, we all missed the kick. It’s a total team operation.”
Harvey Fialkov can be reached at .
