High-flying Jet crashes down in Pittsburgh

America At Large: Did you hear Prince Harry disgraced himself again? Yeah, he went to a costume party dressed as the Jets' kicker.

Wish I could take credit for that insightful analysis of last weekend's play-off loss in Pittsburgh, but the observation came from late-night talk-show host David Letterman. Doug Brien, in any case, might as well get used to it. He's going to be hearing a lot of stuff like that over the next several months.

An itinerant kicking specialist, Brien has played for six NFL teams in the 11 years since he was drafted by the San Francisco 49ers, but the New York Jets were sufficiently impressed with his performance a year ago that they rewarded him with a six-year, $7.7 million contract that included a signing bonus of $625,000. That's a lot of money to shell out for a guy who's only on the field for a few plays a game.

Just a week earlier Brien had been more or less the toast of New York when he booted home a game-winning field goal in overtime to beat San Diego for the Jets' first play-off win on the road in 22 years. Ironically, Brien got his chance to be the hero that night only because the Chargers' rookie kicker Nate Kaeding had blown his own chance to win the game by missing from point-blank range earlier in the overtime period.

Last Saturday night was different. The scrappy Jets, despite not having scored an offensive touchdown, had not one but two chances to knock off top-seeded Pittsburgh, but Brien missed a pair of field goal attempts in the last two minutes of regulation. Once again the game went to overtime, and Steelers kicker Jeff Reed succeeded were Brien had failed, putting a ball through the uprights 11 minutes into extra time.

"Last week was great," said a rueful Brien. "This week sucks." By virtue of the 20-17 win, the Steelers advanced to Sunday's AFC Championship Game, where they will host the defending champions, the New England Patriots. The Jets, who had gone into the game nine-point underdogs, get the next six months off.

When we came upon Brien some 20 minutes after the game, he had hurriedly dressed and was desperately trying to squeeze his way out the door of the locker room, preferring to take his chances with the inevitable taunts from the Pittsburgh partisans waiting outside rather than subject himself to the downcast countenance of his benumbed team-mates.

"I'm very disappointed," Brien had said on his way out the door. "But I'm mostly disappointed for the guys on the field. They worked so hard and played so well."

In Brien's defence, neither of his attempts to put the game away was what you'd call an easy kick - the misses came from 47 and 42 yards - and his cause wasn't helped by some questionable play-calling and some shoddy clock management on the part of Jets coach Herman Edwards, but he is paid well over a million dollars a year to do just one thing.

And when you're the kicker and your team has run just one play inside the opponent's 20 yard line but the score is still tied with two minutes to go, there's a pretty good chance it's all going to fall on your shoulders.

Despite their failure to mount scoring drives against the Steelers, the Jets found themselves in a position to win because Santana Moss had returned a Pittsburgh punt for one touchdown and defensive back Reggie Tongue had scored on an 86-yard interception return after picking off a pass thrown by the Steelers' rookie quarterback Ben Roethlisberger.

Brien's first chance to break the 17-17 tie came just before the two-minute warning after a Jets drive stalled at the Pittsburgh 28. Edwards reckoned that the spot was at the upper end of Brien's range. "He made one last week and I thought he could make it," said the coach.

After putting his boot to the ball, Brien's body language suggested that he thought he'd made the 47-yarder, but the ball began to tail in the wintry January wind, and in the end it clanked off the goalpost. "I thought I made it," he recalled later. I thought it was in."

Even after the miss, redemption seemed to be headed Brien's way when team-mate David Barrett intercepted Pittsburgh's Roethlisberger on the next play. With the Steelers burning timeouts, the Jets moved the ball to the 23 yard-line with six seconds left. Then New York inexplicably called a timeout of their own, ran a play, and called another with two seconds left.

Edwards said later that the earlier of these had been inadvertently called by Moss. The coach ran one last play to burn four more seconds off the clock to eliminate any chance of having to kick off to the Steelers afterwards.

But if that were the case, why not use the play to move the ball toward the centre of the field? As it was, it left Brien kicking from the left hash-mark, making a difficult kick harder still.

The miss two minutes earlier had been close. This one wasn't. Brien hooked it and it sailed wide to the left.

"The first one hadn't gone as far as I thought, so I tried to hit the second one hard," said Brien. "I might have hit it too hard and I missed it."

"Every single kicker has been there before," said Brien's Pittsburgh counterpart Reed. "I feel his pain. I feel bad for him. I didn't want them to win the game, but I do feel for him as a kicker."

"It's going to be hard to deal with it," confessed Brien on his way out the door. "It'll take a while to get over it."

Fleeing further torment by reporters, Brien was hustled onto the team bus by a phalanx of minders from the Jets public relations staff. His team-mates, though, declined to point fingers.

"Obviously," said Gowin, "We wouldn't have been in this game if it wasn't for the kick he made last week." "Shit happens sometimes," said Moss. "It's something he'll have to live with, and we'll live with it together."