Suffice it to say that Scott Norwood has not spent the past 12 months watching the videotape of last year's Super bowl. Give him a choice and he'd rather watch the entire Friday the 13th series; or hear Annie sing "Tomorrow" a hundred times; or sit through Ishtar re-runs.
Norwood didn't say that exactly as he endured media questioning Wednesday in advance of this year's Super Bowl. But that was clearly the sentiment as the field goal kicker for the Buffalo Bills stared straight ahead and spoke soberly about everyone's most popular topic: the 47-yard field goal he missed as time ran out at last year's Super Bowl game between the Bills and the New York Giants.The Giants won the game, 20-19, and promptly put Norwood on their Christmas card lists. As for Norwood, he became adversity's poster child. Ever since, he has been harrangued by questions about how it felt to miss a kick that big, about how he's handled it, and whether it keeps him up nights realizing that another 18 inches to the left and that kick would have won the Super Bowl.
With the Bills on the doorstep of yet another Super Bowl appearance this Sunday in the Metrodome against the Washington Redskins, the questioning has only intensified.
"The thing is, like I've said many, many times, it was one kick in my career. You move on from it. I can't live in the past," Norwood kept telling reporters as politely as he knew how.
He said he has neither dwelled on the miss, nor has he looked at replays to see what went wrong.
"If you see a bad movie in a movie theatre, why would you want to choose to see it again?" he said.
Norwood said it's his philosophy that kicks are all different. They should be taken on an individual basis. Do your best with each one and move on. If you don't move on you might turn into a blubbering idiot; or, at the very least, into an unemployed kicker.
"From my standpoint you do the best you can and let it go at that," he said. "All I can worry about is how I'm kicking now, not how things went in the past."
From all indications, he has been able to do that. Norwood converted 18 of 29 field goals for the Bills as they went 13-3 during this past regular season. And in their playoff wins over Kansas City and Denver to get to the Super Bowl, he's a perfect two for two. The 44-yarder he kicked against Denver turned out to be the winning points in Buffalo's 10-7 win. And the 47-yarder he kicked against Kansas City was the longest playoff field goal in Bills history, not to mention a make from the identical distance as last year's Super Bowl miss.
During the regular season Norwood, a seven-year NFL veteran (all as a Buffalo Bill), passed milestones by playing in his 100th game and by scoring his 600th career point. No small feats for a kicker.
He kicked the longest field goal of his career, a 52-yarder against the New York Jets, a kick that tied as longest-ever in Bills history; and against the Los Angeles Raiders he kicked a 44-yard field goal in overtime to win the game.
There are worse ways to mourn a Super Bowl miss.
Norwood said Wednesday that he may actually be stronger for missing last year's kick. He said it has made him focus even harder and helped him further separate the realities from the un-realities.
The realities being that you can't make them all.
Also, he said his teammates, friends and family have been more supportive than ever. Especially his teammates, most of whom realize that it could have been them, not him. And who also realize they could have gotten closer to the middle of the field and closer to the goalposts before ushering him out on the Tampa Stadium turf at the end of the biggest game of the year with the outcome riding on his foot.
The only everlasting negative from The Miss, it appeared on Wednesday, has been the everlasting questions about it.
"My focus is on the future," said Norwood. "Hasn't this been beaten to death?"