7 proCanes will be heading to Hawaii in February for the 2009 NFL Pro Bowl. They are: Clinton Portis, Jon Beason, Jeff Feagles, Reggie Wayne, Andre Johnson, Ray Lewis, and Ed Reed.

The ballot-stuffing is still going on down in Washington, but several Giants are gaining ground. In fact, three Giants - DE Justin Tuck, C Shaun O’Hara and P Jeff Feagles - now lead the fan Pro Bowl voting at their respective positions.



(nydailynews.com)

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. - Finding Jeff Feagles and John Carney in the New York Giants' locker room isn't hard.

The first hint might be the contents of their lockers. Look for the ones with the bottles of Geritol, the packages of Depend undergarments and the occasional AARP memberships offers, all courtesy of their young teammates.

If that isn't enough, ask linebacker and long snapper Zak DeOssie where to find them.

"You mean 'Pops' and 'Grandpa?'" DeOssie said.

And if that doesn't lead to Carney and Feagles, just look for the two bald guys who look more like assistant coaches than football players.
President Bush mistook Feagles for a coach when the Giants were honored for their Super Bowl championship at the White House in April.

If it sounds like Feagles and Carney are a little out of place, in a sense they are. They are defying Mother Nature as the oldest active players in the NFL, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.

Carney, 44, is the place-kicker. The 42-year-old Feagles is the punter and the holder on extra points and field goals

Don't feel sorry for the old guys. They are special special teams guys.

Carney, signed before the start of the season when Lawrence Tynes injured a knee, is leading the NFL with 90 points. He has hit all 27 of his extra points and 21 of 22 field goal attempts. The only one he missed was blocked.

Feagles is seventh in the league in punting with a net average of 39.8 yards.

"I am more afraid to fail than anything and that is what has kept me working hard and taking each game one by one and concentrating on the offseason to see what I can do to get better," Feagles said. "That's what has kept me around so long."

There are at least six Giants coaches that are younger than Feagles and Carney, including special teams coach Tom Quinn, their boss.
Jay Alford, who snaps on the field goal and extra point attempts, laughs about both players being old enough to be his father.

"Both of them make my job so easy," Alford said. "They may be old, but they work out hard. John is 44 and when we are practicing there are times you'll see him running the escalators in the stadium. It's weird. He doesn't have to do that, but he does."

Feagles is the same way, and remarkably he might be in the best shape of his career, thanks to his son, C.J., who recently agreed to attend North Carolina as a punter. He will play for Butch Davis, one of Feagles coaches when he attended Miami in the 1980s.

"By working with his technique for the last year and a half it has forced me to do things I have to do," Feagles said. "It's a refresher course. Usually I put the balls away at the end of the season and doesn't touch them until May. This year I was in unbelievable shape."

Feagles and Carney are both are in their 21st NFL season, tying them for fourth overall for longest tenure in the league with three others. They admit special teams have changed over the past two decades.

Where either a tight end or lineman was the snapper when they started in 1988, now every team has at least one snapper, along with kick returners and coverage people.

"If you look at the best special teams units, those coaches will have a handful of playmakers that the coach and management allow him to keep," Carney said. "They may never get in the mix to be a starter, but they are special teams aces who make special plays throughout the year."

One thing that hasn't changed is that the kickers work on their own. They get about 10 minutes with the team and then do their own thing, watching videotapes, lifting, stretching and kicking.

"If somebody said we had to do as much as the other guys we probably would not know what to do with ourselves," Feagles said. "... Out of sight, out of mind is our motto."

These old guys do fit in, though.

Rookie safety Kenny Phillips, the youngest player on the team at 21, said the old-timers "carry themselves like they are young men. They have a good time, but it is definitely weird seeing them on the team." "I just try to act more immature so I can fit in," Carney quipped. "The guys are great. You expect the razzing and the hazing because some of them are young enough to almost be your son, but it's fun. I have had an opportunity to play with a couple of different generations and it's been exciting to see young guys come in, enter the league and watch them mature into veterans."

Neither Carney nor Feagles seems concerned about the future.

"Once you get to a certain age, you take it year by year," Feagles said. "If you have an organization like the Giants that believes I can do things at my age, that makes it a lot easier."

Added Carney: "I just feel fortunate and blessed and I thank God for the ability, perseverance and the opportunities. It has been a great ride and as long as I feel physically capable, I will try to push the limits."

(phillyburbs.com)

Punter Jeff Feagles said his punt that came after the offsides penalty hit the cable that controls the remote overhead camera. He said he was aiming for the sideline with it -- Feagles is one of the best ever at that -- and all of a sudden the ball started fluttering. He still wound up with a 44-yarder, but it was in the middle of the field and dangerously returnable. We'll do some digging and see if there are NFL rules pertaining to that kind of interference. Feagles said it happens sometimes in warmups, but this is the first time it's happened to him in a game.

(newsday.com)

His defeated football team kneeling around him, the head coach stood in the middle of a semicircle of muddied jerseys and grass-stained egos. He pulled off his cap and rubbed his bald head, searching for the right words, a message that would stick better than the missed tackles that had driven him crazy for the past hour.

He quickly and sternly silenced a groundswell of grumbling about the officiating, then started his speech.

"The difference between winning and losing comes from here," he said, tapping his chest and leaning in for emphasis. "It comes from the heart. You have to want it. Football is about desire and toughness. It's about reaching down and ... and ...

"Hey, is anybody listening to me?"

Uh, no, actually. Nineteen players were looking in about a dozen directions. Some were giving hand signals to their parents, who impatiently jangled car keys. Others were distracted by pony-tailed, giggling cheerleaders. Some glanced at the long line and wondered if the refreshment stand would be out of hot chocolate by the time this boring sermon was over. So, the coach did what he does best: He punted.

"Practice on Monday night," he said with a sigh. "See you then."

In just about any other setting, people would have been hanging on every word from Jeff Feagles. A Rotary meeting of Giants worshippers somewhere in New Jersey. A Big Blue Travel reception on the eve of a critical road game. A Super Bowl victory rally on the steps of New York City Hall.

But here, on a crisp Friday night, under the lights at scruffy Veterans Field in Ridgewood -- where there are no goalposts, only 80 yards between end zones, and a luxury box is a minivan pointed toward the field with the heater running -- one of the greatest punters in NFL history simply couldn't compete with the call of hot dogs and Kit-Kat bars.

"You have to remind yourself that they're 9 years old," Feagles said.

Translation: The kids are not impressed. They can tune him out like any other adult.

The guy is 42 and still playing in the NFL, and just about every time his right foot hits the ball, he sets a record. He has played in all 324 regular-season games since his career began, punting 1,596 times for 66,254 yards. And when he has to drop one inside the opponents' 20-yard line, Feagles hit punts like Tiger Woods hits wedges. If there weren't a bias against punters, he would be a Hall of Fame slam dunk.

But when it comes to his resume, this is what the kids hear: Blah, blah, blah.

"They know he's a professional football player," parent Mark Miller said. "But, to them, he's just 'Coach Feagles.' He's like their Little League coach or basketball coach."

On the eve of the season, Feagles invited the parents and players to his home and let them behind the velvet ropes of his 21-year career. They saw game jerseys from his days with the Patriots, Eagles and Cardinals, Seahawks and Giants. They held game balls. They caressed memorabilia from the unlikely Super Bowl triumph last February.

"Now, that was cool," running back Quincy Peene said.

But when they left the house, they left Jeff Feagles, NFL punter, in the basement. Out here, in the real world, where they see him every day in warmups and sneakers, he is one of them. With four sons (who are terrific athletes) and a thirst to coach, Feagles is a fixture at any local sports event.

"Ike Hilliard came here one day and everyone went nuts," high school student Ryan Ghaderi said. "Mr. Feagles is probably more famous, but he's just Mr. Feagles. He's not Jeff Feagles, Giants punter. Not to us, anyway."

And because he is just one of them, he is open to the ribbing. They still laugh about the time he volunteered to coach a seventh-grade lacrosse team. Feagles already had coached football, basketball and baseball in town. Did he know anything about lacrosse?

"Not a thing," Ghaderi said. "He would say things and we would go, 'Huh?' and laugh. He tried to sound like he knew what he was talking about, but he was ..."

"Clueless," Chris Ebert said.

On the other sideline of the peewee football games, they are usually clueless, too. Ken Crowley, a parent, was snapping photos for the Ramsey football website when someone pointed to the Ridgewood coach and suggested he might want to take a few shots of him.

"That guy?" Crowley said. "Why?"

Minutes after Crowley was told, Ridgewood was stopped for a 3-yard loss on a fourth-and-1. Crowley walked past with a smirk on his face. "I bet he wished he had punted that time," he said. (Incidentally, Feagles' team didn't punt once.)

During games, he paces the sideline. Coaches are allowed on the field, but Feagles sends his offensive and defensive coordinators. Once in a while, during a timeout, he'll sprint into the huddle, say a few words and scat. But mostly, he shouts from a distance: "Get the ball!" or "Make a play!" when his team in on defense, and "Block! Block! Block!" when his kids have the ball. But it's all under control.

"I don't want to act like an idiot in front of the kids," he said. "You can get your point across without ranting and raving."

We know what you're thinking: Maybe he could make that point to his excitable boss, Tom Coughlin. But Feagles smiles and insists he has learned a lot from his gruff coach -- organization, attention to detail, motivation and lists ... lots of lists, because Feagles The Coach has more jobs than Coughlin.

He is head coach (compiling the playbook), equipment manager (fixing chin straps on the fly), trainer ("Where does it hurt?"), parent (his son, Zach, is a running back and linebacker), team psychologist ("Don't quit! Don't ever quit!"), traveling secretary ("Does everyone have a ride home?") and head of security.

Early in the game, his defense stripped a running back and the ball was returned for a touchdown, but an official called a questionable penalty -- about 20 yards from the play -- and the TD was nullified. Some of the coaches and parents grew mouthy. Feagles calmed them. The controversial play turned out to be the difference in the game, but he wouldn't allow his players to blame the referees.

That's the message he was trying to deliver when no one was listening. Of course, like Coughlin, he could fine his players.

"They're 9," Feagles said with a laugh. "We run sprints instead. What am I going to do, take their lunch money?"

Hey, it might get their attention.

(nj.com)

EAST RUTHERFORD, NJ - Like the Energizer Bunny, Jeff Feagles keeps going and going and going. The most prolific punter in NFL history is in his 21st professional season. He has 323 consecutive regular season games, 1,596 punts, 66,254 yards and, after a two-decade wait, one Super Bowl ring to his credit.

Feagles’ wife Michelle has been with him for his entire professional journey. Actually, they’ve been partners longer than that. They began dating when Jeff was a junior and Michelle a sophomore at Gerard High School in Phoenix. Since then, they’ve been on a football odyssey that has taken them to college in Miami and NFL stops in New England, Philadelphia, Arizona, Seattle and, since 2003, the Giants. Along the way they raised four sons. It has been a rich, rewarding, entertaining and fun life in which punting a football has always played an integral role.

But for Jeff and Michelle, the greatest joys from punting are yet to come. Not because Feagles, 42, plans to play until he’s eligible for Social Security. Their oldest son, C.J., is an outstanding senior punter at Ridgewood (N.J.) High School who has received a full scholarship to the University of North Carolina.

“I’m very proud of him,” Jeff Feagles said. “With my career winding down it’s going to be a pleasure to go watch a football game and have your son doing what you did forever. Plus, I’ll be able to critique him as well. He has a lot of natural talent, more than I had, and he’s got the coaching. I never had the coaching and had to be self-taught, but he’s getting the coaching and he’s very coachable and he understands the position.”

C.J. – his given name is Christopher Jeffrey, but he’s been known by his initials since shortly after birth – hopes to play in the NFL some day. Five years from now, Jeff will be 47. Heck, George Blanda kicked a 41-yard field goal in the 1975 AFC Championship Game when he was 48. Is it possible Jeff and C.J. might someday be dueling punters in the same NFL game?

“You really think about that,” Feagles said. “He’s one step removed from the next level. I think he can have a good college career and his goals are one year at a time, but I know his long term goals are to be a professional. It would be a great experience for me and him as well as my wife to go and watch him kick. I just can’t wait.”

“That would be unbelievable,” C.J. said of joining an NFL team while his father is still in the league. “Obviously, if that were to happen it would be a long time from now. It would be really cool.”

For now, he’ll enjoy his current circumstance. After all, how many high school seniors have a father playing in the NFL, not to mention one who just brought home a Super Bowl ring?

“All my friends think it’s cool and it’s fun,” C.J. said.

Given that, should we be surprised that the parent who pushed him back to football was … Michelle?

When he was young, C.J. would go out in the backyard and emulate his father. Even then, it was obvious he had a lot of talent. C.J. punted as a high school freshman, but sat out his sophomore season two years ago. His father chose not to intervene.

“I wasn’t upset, because I didn’t want to push him into something he didn’t want to do,” Feagles said. “But I told him when you’re ready I’ll help you, but if you don’t want to do it I’m not going to force you to do it. But really, his mother forced him to play football his junior year. She’s taking credit for all of it.”

Rightly – and proudly – so. Michelle has become a connoisseur of punting over the last 25 years. She knows a strong leg when she sees one. But C.J. was keeping his in the house.

“He’s not a bad kid by any stretch of the imagination, but just the down time with cell phones and computers these days drove us nuts - that he would just not physically engage in anything,” Michelle said. “I think he regretted that. It was one of those lazy teenager things where he didn’t want to go to summer practice, but once football season starts he sees all of his friends and says that he should have done that.”

Michelle didn’t want C.J. spending another autumn with electronic gadgets, so she not-so-gently prodded him to get back onto the football field.

“Jeff is so laid back and doesn’t want to force his kids to do anything,” she said. “We’ve been dating since high school, so I’ve been out with Jeff kicking in the park since he was 18 years old. I’ve seen a lot of practice and I said to C.J., ‘I’ve seen you kick for fun in the backyard. You’re really good.’ I asked him for one year and he said he didn’t want to, that he just liked doing it for fun. I told him if he hated it he could hang up his shoes and I’d never say another word. He actually ended up really enjoying it and realized he definitely had some talent that trickled down.

“We’re just thrilled to have him focusing on something and seeing that he really enjoys it, too, and isn’t just doing it because he’s good at it. He thoroughly enjoys it and you can tell that he has found something he really loves to do. He obviously has the talent, but I’m the mean mom who likes to get people to do things they don't want to do. So yeah, I have to say I’m guilty of forcing him.”

Good thing she did. C.J. quickly became one of the best punters in the region. On Tuesdays, the players’ day off, he would receive special tutoring from his father.

“I kept telling him if you want to work, I’m there for you and I’ll help you and we’ll dedicate the time and the effort and we’ll find a place to kick in the winter and we’ll do it,” Jeff said. “He did fairly well, not great. After my season was over we talked about working on his technique and fundamentals and taking punting a little more seriously and he committed to doing it.”

Two or three days a week, Jeff and C.J. would work out in a bubble in nearby Waldwick owned by former Giant Jim Burt. They would also work in the bubble in the Giants Stadium Parking lot. A member of the team’s video department would often tape the workouts, which father and son would review at home. C.J. became focused on improving his techniques and fundamentals. In the spring, they resumed their work outdoors.

At the same time, Jeff began investigating which colleges needed punters and where he had connections with the coaching staff. He talked to members of the Giants coaching staff who were familiar with the recruiting process. Feagles also consulted with Phil Simms, whose two sons were both highly-recruited quarterbacks.

“He gave me some great advice on what to look at and how you go about doing these things,” Feagles said. “One thing he told me is you have to get a list of schools you’d like to go to, then you have to investigate what kids are on scholarship there and then investigate the other kids that may not be on scholarship. The path that colleges like to take with punters and kickers is they invite them to walk on for a year to see them kick, evaluate them, and then there is usually a scholarship at the end of it.”

C.J. took another route. He planned to attend several football camps, but first went to a college showcase at Rutgers that included a lot of punters from the metropolitan area. C.J. acquitted himself well in comparison with the other players. “That gave him a little bit of confidence knowing that, ‘Hey, I think I’m better than these other guys and these are the top recruits in the area,’” Jeff said.

Soon after C.J.’s school year ended on June 25, Jeff and he traveled to North Carolina. The head coach there is Butch Davis, who was the defensive line coach at Miami when Feagles played college football. The two men have remained close through the years.

“C.J. had a great workout and they ended up liking what they saw,” Jeff said. “Knowing the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, they ended up offering him a scholarship. In the meantime, we were really high on going to Boston College. That’s the school C.J. really wanted to look at. They were very, very interested, but they didn’t have a scholarship to offer.”

So C.J. will be a Tarheel in 2009.

“They are planning on C.J. playing his freshman year, which we have to get him ready for,” said Jeff, who, thanks to his friendship with Davis, will be able to continue tutoring his son without the coaching staff considering it meddling. “I told him the other day, ‘Listen, you’re a year away right now from going on national TV.’ I didn’t want to scare him but that’s reality."

It would not have been if stayed on his computer. But approximately a year after Michelle all but ordered C.J. out of the house, he has a full ride to a great university in a major conference with a beautiful campus about a 90-minute flight from home.

“I never miss an opportunity to say, ‘I told you so,’” Michelle said. “Mom knows best and I like to point that out.”

Any teenager would argue that point, but C.J. is happy Michelle was right this time.

“I knew I had some talent, but I wasn’t really full into playing football,” C.J. said. “I was more into messing around with my friends and throwing the ball around. If we were playing, I would punt it every once in a while, but I never actually thought of doing it in high school or at that level.

“My dad thought I had talent, but he didn’t want to make me play football. He didn’t want to be one of those dads. My mom used to see me in the backyard messing around and thought I was pretty good, so she encouraged me to play.”

Before he heads to Tobacco Road, C.J. is completing his high school career at Ridgewood High. In addition to his punting duties, he is also a wide receiver and safety. After watching Jeff for more than two decades, Michelle thinks first about the all-important net average, so she watches the flight of the ball and not Jeff. But it’s a whole different feeling when her oldest son is on the field.

“I’m so confident with Jeff,” she said. “With C.J., I’m just so nervous for him and my stomach is in knots when I watch him play. Once the ball is gone, then I feel good. But C.J. is bigger than Jeff was at that age, so C.J. has some meat on his bones; Jeff was lankier. I just worry about his nerves and wanting him to succeed, so I get a little nervous - as I used to when Jeff was first in the league and in college as well.”

All these years later, Jeff’s still kicking. And now he has someone to follow his footsteps.

“He’s probably a spilt image of me,” Feagles said. "C.J. is very laid back, very outgoing, but maybe a little lazier than I am. But he’s a good all around kid and good to be around.

“He’s also very similar on the field. Our technique and fundamentals – we have the same leg swing and mannerisms. It’s pretty scary. We work a lot on directional and coffin corner kicks. He’s only going to get better. The upside is endless and the one thing I will be able to work with him on that nobody did with me is the mental side of kicking. Hopefully, one day he’ll be in the league and you’ll see the similarities.”

(giants.com)

ALBANY, N.Y. - With no other kickers in the New York Giants' training camp, Jeff Feagles and Lawrence Tynes can enjoy some job security.

But even job security has a down side. For the Super Bowl champion punter and place-kicker, that means competing against themselves.

Of course, that's something both have done before.

Feagles has punted only a few times in the first two weeks of camp. Most of the time, he will take snaps from Zak DeOssie, take a few steps forward and then stop as a machine behind him sends a football downfield in a perfect spiral for the returners to handle.

"Right now, the machine is a lot better than I am. He can kick all day," said the 42-year-old Feagles, entering his 21st NFL season.

When the team practices twice a day at the University at Albany, he spends the mornings inside the gym, stretching, swimming and doing little drills that he has done for years.

"I just have to maintain what I've developed up to this point," he said as the Giants prepared for their preseason opener against the Lions in Detroit on Thursday. "For me I'm ready to go."

Tynes isn't as fortunate. The 30-year-old, who is in his fifth year, is on the field for both practices. He usually kicks off about 10 times a day and attempts at least eight field goals.

But during the morning sessions, he usually works by himself.

"It's just me out there," Tynes said. "It's boring. I don't have a snapper or a punter to hang out with."

Fifty to 60 times a day, Tynes will retrace the steps he will take on a field goal attempt and then swing his leg through an imaginary ball.

Of course, every kick is down the middle, splitting the uprights, like the one in overtime in Green Bay in January that sent the Giants to the Super Bowl and set up their stunning win over the previously unbeaten New England Patriots.

"It was a great memory for me but I want to move on. As great as that was, I still have room to improve," said Tynes, who missed two other game-winning field goal attempts in the NFC title game before converting.

Since last season ended, Tynes has been adjusting his kicking motion toward more explosive kickoffs and field goals. He said the changes are subtle, but there has been more pop to his kicks.

His accuracy is better than in camp a year ago when he was pushed for the place-kicking job by Josh Huston; this year, Tynes hit his first 19 field goal attempts.

However, there is also another reason for the improvement this year , Tynes got a chance to prepare for camp.

A year ago, his wife had a difficult pregnancy and delivered twins the day Tynes was leaving for camp. He struggled early, but made the team and hit 23 of 27 field goals attempts during the season. The game winner against Green Bay was his only game winner of the year.

"People say what a difference a year makes, and they are right," Tynes said.

During training camp, the thrill for Tynes and Feagles comes in little competitions, like the one coach Tom Coughlin set up last Friday.
Feagles represented the defense and Tynes the offense. The winning group got an extended curfew that night.

Feagles' goal was to punt inside the 10-yard line. Tynes had to make 40-something-yard field goals. Both missed on their first three tries.

Feagles got one down at the 5-yard line on his fourth, leaving Tynes with a make-or-come-home-early kick.

With curfew at stake, Feagles , the holder for Tynes , considered his options.

"I was thinking of Charlie Browning him on one," Feagles quipped. "But he was representing the offense and they would've probably piled me on."
Feagles didn't pull the ball away from Tynes on his last kick and it went through the uprights. Everyone got an extra hour added to their curfew, which made Tynes and Feagles popular with everyone.

"It was a good time," Feagles said.

(philly.com)

Punter Jeff Feagles re-signed Tuesday with the New York Giants for two more seasons.

Financial terms were not disclosed. Jeff Feagles re-signed Tuesday with the New York Giants through 2009.
(David Duprey/Associated Press)

Feagles, who represents himself in negotiations, earned $1 million US last season, and helped the Giants win Super Bowl XLII.

At 41, he is the oldest player to compete in the Super Bowl, won 17-14 over the previously unbeaten New England Patriots.

“I’m just very, very happy to have a chance to come back and play for the defending world champions,” Feagles said. “It feels great.” Click here to continue reading...