Photo courtesy U of M Athletics
Much will be made Sunday about New England quarterback Tom Brady starting his ninth Super Bowl when his Patriots take on the Los Angeles Rams in Atlanta. Less discussed will be Patriot kicker — and former Memphis Tiger — Stephen Gostkowski playing in his sixth Super Bowl. Gostkowski takes a 2-3 personal record into Sunday’s game, having been part of championship teams after the 2014 and 2016 seasons, and coming up short after the 2007, 2011, and 2017 seasons. (Last year’s Super Bowl had another Tiger kicker in uniform for the champion Philadelphia Eagles: Jake Elliott.)
A two-time All-Pro, Gostkowski has climbed to 12th on the alltime NFL scoring chart with 1,743 points. He and Hall of Famer Don Hutson (the NFL’s first great receiver) are the only two men in football history to lead the league in scoring five times. Gostkowski topped all scorers in 2008 and then every season from 2012 to 2015.
Remarkably, Gostkowski enrolled at the University of Memphis in 2002 as a baseball-first athlete (he was a pitcher). He went on to kick 70 field goals and score 369 points for the Tigers, numbers that today rank second (behind only Elliott) in the program’s history.
