Cardinals' 35th season in Arizona: How an SNL skit made Jay Feely a more confident kicker

Already having been a successful NFL kicker who played 14 seasons in the league, Jay Feely has found success in the second phase of his professional life: as a broadcaster calling NFL games for CBS.

Feely, who played for five NFL teams including four seasons with the Arizona Cardinals from 2010 to 2013, lives in the Phoenix metro area and had this past week off from broadcasting, not having to fly to an NFL city to help call a game.

It's Feely's third season in the NFL on CBS broadcast booth.

"My favorite part is it doing the production meeting because to sit with head coaches and GMs and the quarterbacks and defensive guys and really just talk football and learn how and why they do things. Because there's so many different ways to try and get it done, and it's fascinating for me," Feely said.

He spent Wednesday morning at the Cardinals' annual charity golf tournament in Chandler. An avid golfer, Feely plays as much as he can and has done so since college. He calls the Cardinals his team, and when they win he's excited for them.

"It's fun to get out here and play and get to see all the guys you know," Feely said of reconnecting with Cardinals alumni. "You get to see a lot of guys that are coming back and at times is the only the only time you see them throughout the year.

"The older you get, the more you appreciate relationships," he added.

This NFL season, which ends with Super Bowl 57 in Glendale, The Republic visits with some of the names and faces from the Cardinals' 35 seasons in Arizona. This week it's Feely, who started his professional career in arena football. More on that in the interview.

Q: Would you say that the process of becoming a kicker has changed quite a bit since your younger days?

A: "It has! When I started off and when I was coming out of high school, there weren't all these camps, there weren't all these ranking systems. And there's probably good and bad to that but there's a lot more exposure. But you're a lot more tied to these camps now too, for kids coming up. But your kickers now are a lot stronger. They're a lot more technically sound. And I think that makes them a lot better. And you can just look at the numbers. You know, the percentages how good guys are? Look at (Baltimore Ravens) Justin Tucker, you know, he's been over 90 percent (accuracy) his entire career. That was like my best year. I think he's the best of all time."

Q: The Cardinals have used four kickers this season (five if you count Eno Benjamin on kickoffs). Does that affect team chemistry at all, even if it is kickers?

A: "Sure. Because every time you bring somebody new in, you're resetting. You're trying to get them comfortable with the snap and the hold and the cadence and all that kind of stuff. And it has an impact. I mean, (Cardinals kicker Matt) Prater, you know, it's funny because Prater and I go all the way back to when he came out of college, he was an undrafted free agent with the Dolphins, which is where I was. He was in college with my brother. So he beat my brother out in college and I beat him out in the NFL. And then I'll fast forward all the way to Detroit. We both did a workout with the Lions. And they ended up taking Prater. And that was the end of my career. So it's full circle, and now he's training with Jace (Feely's son) in the offseason."

Q: Do you have some great stories from your time playing arena football?

A: "It really was was such a joke, really, you know, to go from Michigan where everything was buttoned up and first class and done a very specific way, and then you go to the arena league where they're having tricycle races in between plays, you know, I was like, where am I right now? I was working as a financial advisor then and kind of doing that on the side and I wasn't going to keep doing it if if I was going to have to just play in the arena league. And finally I got an opportunity to go into camp, and you've got to be ready. And that's kind of what life is, you don't know when those opportunities are going to come. You prepare yourself for those opportunities and be ready when the opportunity presents itself to go out there and perform. And finally after two years, got brought into camp as the camp guy in Atlanta and ended up beating out Bruce Arians' son Jake, and winning the job, you know, and then, you know, go forward 14 years and then Bruce is my head coach (with Arizona). And then he cut me!"

Q: Where is the toughest place you have ever kicked?

A: "All your outdoor cold weather stadiums. So Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Chicago. You know if it's grass field, outdoor, cold weather, December. I played a Monday night game in Pittsburgh. They had a Pitt (college) game and high school games that weekend. They tried to replace the field. It rained all weekend. So it just became an absolute quagmire. And it was like, you would step in and sink like six inches because they put the field on top of the old field. And it just became a big mud pit. That was the game that a punt flew down and hit into the dirt and stuck like halfway up, like it just sucked it in. It was just awful."

Q: Were you really the subject of a "Saturday Night Live" skit?

A: "Yeah, 'The Jay Feely Story: The Long Ride Home.' It was (comedian) Dane Cook (as Feely). I was playing for the Giants. We went to Seattle, end of the year. And I missed three game winners, one at the end of the game, two in overtime. And they did a spoof about what it was like to ride home on that plane. And in retrospect, looking back it was the best thing that ever happened to me for my career. Because before that game, I was just good enough to keep my job. After that game, I didn't miss another game winner the rest of my career. I had the one here that was tipped by Buffalo, but I didn't miss one. And it was because you learn to handle that pressure when you go through a failure like that. And you get lambasted, Saturday Night Live as a skit, you lose some of that fear of failure. And I lost that fear of failure going through that. And then the next week I was in Philly. We have another game winner in overtime. The night before was the Saturday Night Live skit. They play a montage of my misses during the timeout on the Jumbotron in the stadium at Philly, the City of Brotherly Love. And you go out there you make that kick and you're like OK, what am I scared of all the time? Like I felt as bad as I can feel and it didn't break me. And so that really helped me. I was a much better kicker. After that I was one of the better kickers in the NFL the rest of my career."

Q: Thoughts on this year's Cardinals team?

A: "I think everybody would say that the talent, the team could be a lot better than than they are. And I think Kliff would say that, I think Kyler would say that. I think Michael Bidwill and Steve Keim would say that, and they've just got to find a way to kind of bring all that talent together and utilize it where they can maximize that talent. If they do that, I think they're as good as anybody."

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Cardinals' 35th season in Arizona: 'Saturday Night Live' motivated ex-kicker