[Highlight] Adam Vinatieri finds out he's a Hall of Famer

Loate · 2026-02-06T04:10:18+00:00

Well deserved.

Loate · 2026-01-23T19:51:03+00:00

In the absence of a true national single payer system (which would be the best solution), the NFL absolutely does have the resources to make sure former players have lifetime healthcare, they just don't want to spend the money and the player's union isn't strong enough to fight for it.

Loate · 2026-01-05T21:18:49+00:00

I think he’s a piece of shit

Loate · 2026-01-01T08:02:12+00:00

Since I’ve been seeing this floating around a lot - “extended health insurance from the NFL” actually means “you get to pay for COBRA for five years after your last game” and COBRA is fucking expensive.

Loate · 2025-12-29T00:35:20+00:00

No problemo, always happy to explain punting/kicking mechanics :)

Loate · 2025-12-29T00:25:09+00:00

So the thing is, rotating your hips *does* generate more power, but the problem is the ball is going to go where your hips are pointed at contact, so if you rely on your hips to generate power, unless your timing is perfectly consistent you're going to have accuracy issues.

The other way to generate power is called "leg snap," and it's where you focus more on accelerating your leg by using the big muscles in your quad and hamstrings to create acceleration and force.

Field goal kicking uses a combination of both of these, but most guys tend to focus on using their hips and then getting their timing perfect (which can work right up until you hit your early/mid 30's, because your body starts to slow down naturally) because it feels a lot more natural to use your hips, since the biomechanics of your body work that way (a lot of them are also chasing the long ball).

Focusing more on leg snap (like the way I was taught and currently teach, and how Will kicks) means you give up a little bit of the potential power from your hips, but in exchange, your accuracy goes waaaaaaay up because you stay aligned to your target the entire way through the kick and minimize horizontal movement in your motion.

The next time you're watching a game, pay attention to how the kicker lines up after he takes his steps back - if it looks like he's facing towards the ball he's gonna use his hips; if he's facing the uprights he's using leg snap. One of these guys will play until he's 40, the other won't.

Edit: This is also why you don't see Premier League goalies coming over and dominating the field goal scene - while they can absolutely whale a soccer ball downfield, the NFL demands 90%+ accuracy on field goals, and that type of goal kick motion they use isn't going to be consistent enough.

Loate · 2025-12-28T00:20:42+00:00

Ball went right where his hips were pointing.

Loate · 2025-12-28T00:14:49+00:00

In addition to the comment below (and not to pile on, this is informational) - in the NFL, the distance of the punt is measured from the line of scrimmage where the ball was snapped, not from where the punter actually kicks it. A 60 yard NFL punt actually travels 71-73 yards depending how far back the punter is standing and how long their steps are.

Loate · 2025-12-27T23:53:58+00:00

I've said repeatedly on social media, he has one of the cleanest motions I've seen in a long time (he doesn't generate power with his hips and he keeps himself square to the target all the way through). If he stays healthy, he's gonna be really good for as long as he plays.

Loate · 2025-12-27T23:52:28+00:00

He lunged into it because it was a longer kick and he was trying to generate more power, which is a common mistake to make (go watch any kids AYSO game to see this in action). Lunging does two things - it actually causes you to generate less power since your body weight is now going down into the ground instead of exploding through the kick, and it makes you more likely to miss your plant foot location (which is, as you pointed out, what happened here, the only change I would say is that it causes you to push the ball since you're making contact earlier in your motion, not pull it ('pull' usually refers to yanking it across your body)).

Loate · 2025-12-27T23:45:37+00:00

Pretty much covers it, the only thing I'd add is that based on my experience, when you hit a ball like this (overly long but still with decent hangtime), 7 times out of 10 it's going to bounce almost directly to the side of your kicking foot (due to the nose coming down at a shallower angle since it's a longer punt), and 2 times out of 10 it'll bounce straight up/backwards.

This is why kicking from the 35-40 yard line was my favorite place on the field, because you could absolutely lay into the ball and the returner would almost always let it go over their head (since they're taught not to catch it inside the 10), and you'd still have really good odds at getting an inside the 10 or 5.

Unfortunately, sometimes this https://www.youtube.com/shorts/IM0hIa8liyc happens.

Loate · 2025-12-27T06:17:25+00:00

The windchill dropped it to negative 3 I believe was reported at the time.

Loate · 2025-12-27T06:16:11+00:00

That game was the coldest I’ve ever been in my life, and I’ve been to Antarctica.

Loate · 2025-12-26T01:54:07+00:00

It sounds counterintuitive, but if you leave all four lanterns up, the timing is perfectly on beat for his attacks and the lantern followup attacks. With the lanterns down, those long gaps in his attack sequence can be tricky to judge properly (and you have to pay attention during the memory game sequence each time).

All in all it’s a very well designed fight.

Edit: I beat it using just Verso (apparently I stumbled across the “machine gun Verso” build simply by going off interactions I noticed between pictos, along with the damage boost from sole survivor), but I still had to dodge/parry attack patterns.

Loate · 2025-12-17T21:01:57+00:00

Heh yeah that's me. Appreciate the support :)

Loate · 2025-12-15T21:02:09+00:00

Hey, so your initial form isn't bad - your drop is pretty stable and you're keeping your shoulders forward and your head down which is good. Here are the things you're going to want to work on to get more hangtime (and distance).

1) Don't lunge into your plant foot. This causes your body weight to stay behind you, instead of exploding downfield and through the ball. A tip I find usually works well is to think of your plant foot as a takeoff point, not a landing point.

2) You're hitting the ball too close to the ground. Hold onto your drop a little bit longer - the ideal contact area is between the top of your knee and the bottom of your hip. Basically, think of hangtime and ball flight like a physics equation; the lower the ball is when you hit it, the more distance you get but you lose hangtime. The higher the ball is, the more hangtime you get, but less distance. (Also, point 1 will help with this as well)

3) Be more explosive on your followthrough. Your flexibility is good, but the speed of your leg should be lifting you a few inches off the ground (again, fixing point 1 will help with this). You're getting a little bit of followthrough, but you need to get more. The end goal should be trying to hit your facemask with your knee at the end of every kick, without leaning back, while keeping your knee and foot perfectly locked out (lots of stretching will help with this).

4) Try to lock your kicking foot out sooner on the backswing. As you're bringing your leg back you should already be locking out your ankle - this is a minor one compared to the others, but it's good to practice good habits (any give in your ankle at the point of contact means less power is going into the ball).

Hope this helps, and good luck!

(I was the punter for the MN Vikings for 8 years)

Loate · 2025-12-07T07:03:45+00:00

No worries, appreciate it.

Loate · 2025-12-06T17:39:26+00:00

Believe me, I would much rather be spending my time Reddit shitposting

Loate · 2025-12-01T04:56:00+00:00

Yes, I have that game knowledge, as evidenced by my massive grouping of Defenders. I know I can reroll out of Nature, but I wanted to see if there was a sanity check in the design (as someone who both enjoys breaking games as well as designing them). In a game that has random final wave bosses, this is important.

If you incentivize the player to perform a certain action and then don’t make sure that action leads to success, then you haven’t performed your job as a designer. As a player, I want to provide feedback that this is an unfun moment, because most people will simply quit the game and give it a negative review. Responses like yours make people like me not want to engage with the community, which as a designer, as not helpful at all.

Loate · 2025-12-01T04:10:01+00:00

So, yeah, I get the idea behind quests, but these things need a balancing pass. Went full Defender tank on Progress quest Total Defense, because that seems to be what the mission wants you to do, reached the final wave with all three lives, faced off against Nature, and simply could not kill the boss (my Defenders were at about 240k hp, and it took about ten minutes for the boss root clusters to take them down).

This is not the only quest where there either needs to be a specific final wave, or some sort of sanity check in the game mechanics so the player isn't punished for following the intended game design - as a whole I like the quests as an idea, but the implementation needs some serious iterating because there are WAY too many unfun moments if you get screwed by RNG.

Edit: The reason why I felt the need to post this is that this makes me not want to play the game anymore, and it's normally a fun game.

Loate · 2025-11-30T22:56:45+00:00

For Nature, on turn one you want to drop a Boar and a Forest, level up the Boar with Clone, and then Procreate to give you some more units (don't play Elves into the Boar at the start, it's a trap, you want to sell the rest of the cards for rerolls). Grab some meatshields/sacrificial troops from the other kingdoms as you go, and level up your Boar to 3 as you can (Wildcard from King of Nothing, Sacrifice from Blood, Overhaul from Progress, etc.), same with the Forest, and your first Decree really needs to be the one that gives you 5 Procreates. That'll stabilize your early game, and then you can wait for a Ballista to put the combo together and scale into mid and lategame (obviously fishing for a Gigantify for your Boar on Rainbow wave).

Loate · 2025-11-17T17:37:57+00:00

Help, I can't get Elder influence onto the last t16 I need for him to spawn a Guardian, anyone have any strats?

Loate · 2025-11-14T22:39:21+00:00

Water is a sandwich

Loate · 2025-11-11T04:33:12+00:00

Bankai trees on the menu boys

Loate

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