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My guests for this bonus episode of My Favorite Mistake podcast are four former NFL kickers and one all-time leading scorer from college football. Together, they’ve faced some of the most pressure-packed moments in sports. Joining me are:
- Jay Feely – NFL kicker for 14 seasons after playing for the University of Michigan
- Shayne Graham – 15-year NFL kicker, including for my hometown Cincinnati Bengals
- David Akers – 15-year NFL veteran, six-time Pro Bowler, and Philadelphia Eagles Hall of Famer
- Nick Lowry – 3-time Pro Bowler, Kansas City Chiefs Hall of Famer and the most accurate kicker of his era
- Parker White – University of South Carolina’s all-time leading scorer, now a coach and mentor
With football season kicking off, I asked each of them about their biggest mistakes, pressure moments, and what they learned from them. Their stories go far beyond football, with lessons about resilience, mindset, and growth that apply to leadership, business, and life.
What You’ll Hear in This Episode
- Jay Feely on missing three potential game-winners in one game, being parodied on Saturday Night Live, and how he turned failure into freedom from fear.
- Shayne Graham on why success is impossible without risk, and why fear of failure also means fear of success.
- Parker White on being the “zero or hero” in high-pressure moments and how faith, training, and sports psychology helped him overcome nerves.
- Nick Lowry on being rejected 11 times before making the NFL, persistence as the key to growth, and why mistakes became his “best friend.”
- David Akers on striving for improvement instead of perfection, and how daily discipline created a 15-year NFL career.
Key Takeaways
- Mistakes are not career-ending—they can be career-defining.
- Pressure reveals the importance of focusing on process, not outcome.
- Resilience, persistence, and discipline are universal keys to long-term success.
- The lessons from the football field apply directly to leadership, business, and life.
Key Quotes
“You’re never going to be perfect. The goal is to always keep improving.” — David Akers
“Mistakes are your best friend. They were my best friend.” — Nick Lowry
“If I’m afraid of failure, then I’m also afraid of success.” — Shayne Graham
Scroll down to find:
- Video version of the episode
- How to subscribe
- Quotes
- Full transcript
Video of the SNL Sketch:
Full Videos From the Kickers
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Automated Transcript (May Contain Mistakes)
Mark Graban:
Welcome to My Favorite Mistake. I'm Mark Graban. With football season kicking off in college and the NFL this weekend, I asked five former kickers what they've learned from mistakes and pressure. They are Jay Feely, Shayne Graham, Parker White, David Akers, and Nick Lowry. Now here's what they told me in their own words.
We start with Jay Feely, who kicked in the NFL for 14 seasons. In 2005, playing for the New York Giants in Seattle, he missed three potential game-winners. The fallout was immediate.
Jay Feely:
It's the only kick I ever missed in my career that I can honestly say was because of the pressure of the moment—because I didn’t want to miss again and I was fearing failure. And it had an impact on me. I missed three game-winners, we lost the game, and I had to fly back knowing if I had another bad game, I was probably going to lose my job.
The next week we went to Philadelphia. We had to win that game to get into the playoffs. The night before that game, Saturday Night Live did a spoof about me. It was a four-minute story called The Jay Feely Story: The Long Ride Home. Dane Cook played me. It was all about what it was like to fly home from Seattle to New York after that game.
Fast forward to the next day. I had a game-winner in overtime. I was trying not to think about the field goals I had missed in Seattle—or the SNL skit the night before. The Eagles called a timeout to ice me, and they played a montage of my misses on the Jumbotron during the timeout. It was by far the hardest I’ve ever been challenged mentally.
I went out and was able to make the kick. That was a huge difference-maker for me, because I failed as badly as I could fail, and it didn’t break me. I became a much better kicker. I lost a lot of that fear of failure. I had a lot more fun. In fact, I never missed another game-winner for the next nine years of my career.
I think it was directly a result of failing so badly, having everyone make fun of me, and then overcoming that. Losing that fear of failure allowed me to be so much better going forward. It allowed me to reach my full potential. For the next nine years, I was one of the better kickers in the NFL.
I think that was directly a result of going through that situation—having to rely on my faith, having to be mentally strong and mentally disciplined, and not allowing my mind to wander. That’s really the key to kicking: you can’t think about the implications of what you’re doing. You have to focus on the process, not the product.
If I do the fundamentals right, I’ll get the result I want. But if I focus on the result, or think about the implications of the result, then I lose. That’s what happens to a lot of people in those pressure moments. They start thinking about how important it is, what’s going to happen if they succeed, what’s going to happen if they fail.
It happens in business, too—or when you’re giving a speech. It’s the same. Most people have to learn how to discipline their mind. For me, as soon as we crossed the 50-yard line, I would kick into gear. “Okay, now it’s time to get ready.” I’d just start repeating in my head: head down, lock your ankle, follow through.
I knew if I did those three things—those three fundamentals—I would get the result I wanted. If I focused on those things, my mind couldn’t wander to everything else: If I miss this kick, I’ll lose my job, we’ll have to take the kids out of school, we’ll have to sell the house. All of that was real, but I couldn’t let myself think about it in the moment.
Mark Graban:
Shayne Graham kicked more than a decade in the NFL, including for my hometown Cincinnati Bengals. He argues that fear and success are inseparable.
Shayne Graham:
I think basically when you look at anyone who’s ever been successful, you’ll always see they brag more about their struggles and their failures than they do about their actual success.
So you can’t be afraid to fail. If I’m afraid of failure, then I’m also afraid of success—because success does not happen without the risk of failure. Many times, when we fail, we have to learn from those mistakes, find a way to improve, and avoid repeating them. Sometimes things just happen.
What matters is gaining the ability to have thick skin, deal with it, handle it, and move on. That risk of failure has to be there. My biggest piece of advice is: learn to deal with not having fear of failure.
Mark Graban:
Parker White is the University of South Carolina’s all-time leading scorer. After rookie minicamps with the Chiefs and Buccaneers, he now coaches and passes lessons along to young players.
Parker White:
My mom would say, “The only two people allowed to be nervous on a football team are the quarterback’s mom and the kicker’s mom.” Because when we’re out there, everybody’s eyes are on us.
You have to live with being the zero or the hero a lot of the time, especially late in games. When the bullets were flying, I’d fall back on the fact that we made that kick on Tuesday in practice. Or I’d think back to how hard I trained in the summer—running, lifting—so I could shine in those moments.
It can be tough mentally. My advice to any kicker or athlete worried about mistakes is simple: everybody makes mistakes. It happens. We’re human. For me, I leaned on my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who helped me through a lot. And I also talked with sports psychologists—that can really help, too.
Mark Graban:
Nick Lowry, a multiple-time Pro Bowl kicker and the all-time leading scorer for the Kansas City Chiefs, ties it to persistence and identity.
Nick Lowry:
All those things would never have happened if I’d given up after the 11th rejection.
Mistakes are the chapters in our lives. They teach us different things, depending on whether we’re looking for the lessons, and whether we apply them. A lot of it comes from simply keeping at it. You get more comfortable, more relaxed. You stop feeling like an imposter. You start feeling like yourself again.
So mistakes are your best friend. They were my best friend. I gave up a job working in the United States Senate for Senator Bob Packwood to try one last time to make it in the NFL.
And because I’d already been rejected 11 times by eight teams, I was confident I could beat out the greatest kicker at that point—Jan Stenerud, who went on to become the first kicker in the NFL Hall of Fame.
I encourage you to look at mistakes differently. Look at mistakes as the best way to grow and improve as a human being.
Mark Graban:
David Akers kicked for 15 seasons in the NFL. His son Luke is currently a punter and kicker for my alma mater, the Northwestern Wildcats. David says perfection was never the point.
David Akers:
Whether you’re a kicker, a quarterback, or a cornerback, I think you have to have the mentality of understanding you’re never going to be perfect. If you strive for perfection, you have to understand you’ll always come up a little bit short.
What you try to do is limit those mistakes to times when they don’t affect the team. You try to learn from your mistakes and, if you will, “fall forward,” so you don’t keep repeating the same mistakes over and over.
That applies to business as well: you learn, you move, you grow. You’re either getting better or you’re getting worse. Coaches always say you’re never staying the same. So you should always try to progress, to improve mentally, physically, and spiritually.
My advice is to continue to try to better yourself daily. That’s what I did in my years in the NFL. I wasn’t always the most talented, for sure, but I tried to outwork everybody so I could stay just a percent or two ahead of the guy chasing my job.
That consistency—showing up every day, putting in the work, trying to improve—was the recipe that gave me 15 years in the NFL. Add a little bit every day. You don’t need huge strides. Just push yourself daily to be a little better. You’ll see the fruits of that labor.
Mark Graban:
I’m excited for football, and so are millions of other Americans. What these successful kickers shared is a similar pattern: normalize mistakes, reduce fear, return to fundamentals, keep showing up, and keep improving.
Jay Feely reframes pressure through process.
Shayne Graham treats failure as the cost of success.
Parker White turns practice into confidence and passes it on.
Nick Lowry shows how persistence turns rejection into results.
David Akers makes improvement the daily standard—in football and far beyond.
Failure isn’t the end. It’s the path.
I’m Mark Graban, and this is My Favorite Mistake. If this resonated with you, please follow or subscribe in your podcast app and share this episode with a football fan or colleague.
I encourage you to learn more about my book, The Mistakes That Make Us, at MistakesBook.com, and you can learn more about my speaking, coaching work, and my other books at MarkGraban.com.
Music:
Kicking it low, making noise like a big truck
Showing some hell is the way to go
Yeah, we’re kicking it, kicking it fast, kicking it slow
Bouncing around like a rodeo
Bad girls want to rock and roll
Yeah, we’re kicking it.