SAN JOSE, Calif. -- A fairly hirsute Stephen Gostkowski, who says he’ll keep growing his beard if his wife still kisses him when he returns from the West Coast, talked about being in the zone and a certain 49-yard field goal that never came to pass yesterday.

“I don’t think about it,” he said of his 17 consecutive regular-season field goals. “I never try to miss. It’s not like I go out there and think, ‘Well, I need to get a miss out of the way.’ You just try to make as many in a row as you can and when you miss, you start another streak. Miss one, don’t miss two, that’s my philosophy.”

It was mentioned to Gostkowski that the 49-yard game-clinching field goal he kicked against San Francisco was the same length as the kick he didn’t get to take against the Giants in the Super Bowl, with the Pats opting to go for it on fourth-and-long instead.

“You’d have to ask coach about that. At that time in the (49ers) game we needed that field goal, and back then (against New York) it didn’t seem like the same kind of situation. It’s hard to go back and say ‘what if.’ We’ve moved on way past that."

-SHALISE MANZA YOUNG