01:00 AM EST on Tuesday, November 23, 2004

BY TOM E. CURRAN
Journal Sports Writer

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- There is one pure placekicker in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. His name is Jan Stenerud. He kicked for the Kansas City Chiefs for 13 seasons before spending the last six years of his career in Green Bay and Minnesota.

By the time he'd finished in 1985, Stenerud -- a native of Fetsund, Norway, who attended Montana State University on a ski-jumping scholarship -- kicked 373 field goals on 558 attempts (.668 pecentage). In his glory days with the Chiefs, he went 279 for 436 (.640).

He finished with 1,699 points, went to four Pro Bowls and two AFL All-Star Games.

All of which leads to this conclusion: If Stenerud's in, Adam Vinatieri will waltz in five years after he hangs up his cleats.

Vinatieri, who last week topped the 1,000-career-points mark, is 212 for 263 in eight regular seasons (.806 percent). He's kicked three of the most memorable field goals in NFL history -- the 45-yarder to tie the Raiders in the waning moments of the "Snow Bowl," the 48-yard Super Bowl game-winner in 2001 and the 41-yard game-winner in the Super Bowl nine months ago.

And the soon-to-be 32-year-old just seems to be getting better. He kicked five field goals in a win over the Buffalo Bills last week and four against the St. Louis Rams the week before. For good measure, he threw a touchdown pass to Troy Brown on a well-crafted fake.

So far, Vinatieri's missed just one kick in 2004, a 47-yarder against the Dolphins. Rebounding nicely from a so-so 2003, in which he battled a balky back, Vinatieri entered this weekend leading all NFL kickers with 93 points. He had a 20-point edge in the AFC, having gone 23 of 24 on field goals and 24 for 24 on conversions.

"I think he's an outstanding kicker," said Hall of Fame quarterback Len Dawson, when asked about Vinatieri. "He's proven that. He doesn't have anything to prove. When you make long kicks to win the Super Bowl, I've seen kickers get the lump in their throat an awful lot. Some kickers can't handle the pressure."

Dawson has a better perspective on kickers than many because not only did he kick in college at Purdue, he also held for Stenerud when they both were Chiefs.

"He could boom that thing, and he was tremendously accurate," Dawson recalled. "I remember the first time he came to the team, in 1966, we were in Miami, and I remember some teammates came into the locker room and said, 'You have to see this. This guy's kicking 60-yard field goals.' "

Dawson feels that Stenerud would have been even more accurate if special teams got the same kind of attention in the 1960s and '70s that they do now.

"They didn't work on special teams like they do today," he said. "We never lined up once live with the rush coming during the week."

As for Vinatieri's chances of one day joining both Stenerud and Dawson in the Hall of Fame, Dawson said, "Football isn't like baseball where it's all numbers. A lot of times in football, the [only] question is, 'Do you win?' "

On that count, the debate is closed since no kicker has ever made more dramatic field goals than Vinatieri. And he's still going.