Sebastian Janikowski Retired This Weekend And Now Tom Brady Is The Last Man Standing From The 2000 Draft
PFT – When Sebastian Janikowski announced his retirement on Sunday, he did so as the highest-paid kicker in NFL history.
Janikowski made $53.3 million in his NFL career, topping second place Adam Vinatieri by $6 million.
It may come as a surprise that Janikowski made so much more than Vinatieri, considering that Vinatieri played four more seasons than Janikowski. But the big difference between them is that Janikowski, as a first-round draft pick, made a lot of money right off the bat.
Al Davis believed in Janikowski enough to make him the Raiders’ first-round pick in 2000, and that paved the way for a long and lucrative career.
A lot of people are saying Avengers had the perfect ending. No spoilers or anything but it was well received and there’s your Avengers End Game review with Barstool Carl.
That said, I’m willing to put Janikowski’s retirement this weekend up against the 22nd installment of the Avengers Universe and here’s why:
#1 – Timing: He retires 19 Years to the weekend after getting drafted amidst all this 2019 draft hype. That’s poetic justice for a guy who never missed a FG inside of 19 yards if you really think about it hard enough.
#2 – Body of Work: Janikowski had already made 179 career field goals before Iron Man even came out
Jon Gruden said he really wanted Stephen Alexander with that pick and, uh, FYI Stephen Alexander retired NINE YEARS ago.
Captain America doesn’t have that kind of staying power
#3 – History Maker
Does this look like the biggest leg in NFL history?
4th and final reason I’d put Janikowski’s retirement up against the Ending of Avengers…
Goodbye Content Factory
It started Freshman year media day with him not speaking a lick of English and ends with the kind of Mail Time effort you can only get for a 40+ year old professional athlete.
He was the last bad boy kicker in the league. Not that league history is ripe with bad boy kickers but point remains he was a rare breed and in some circles a national treasure. At the very least he’s basically a folk hero in Florida High School Football
It was May 1995, and Janikowski — who had come to the United States from Poland the year before — was a junior at Seabreeze, when one of his friends on the soccer team convinced him to sample a different sport.
So he showed up at a spring football practice, wearing jeans and sneakers, and asked the coach if he could try a couple kicks.
“I said, ‘Sure,’ and he put a ball down,” Kramer said. “I know this is really cliché, but I’ve never — to this day — heard a ball sound the way it sounded.
“We probably had 110 kids on the field, and for a couple seconds it was just complete silence and everybody just kind of looked at each other.”
Added Janikowski with a shrug: “It wasn’t really that hard.”
…
“What’s the longest field goal you ever kicked?”
“Eighty-two yards in high school,” Janikowski responded, without a hint of hesitation.
Goodbye my sweet Polish Prince
