Seahawks' Brown is one cool customer

This time, the joke was on Matt Hasselbeck.

He and Seahawks kicker Josh Brown were recently at a local restaurant. That night, one of the restaurant employees kept calling Hasselbeck "Josh."

It was sweet redemption for Brown. Someone had finally mistaken Hasselbeck, the team's Pro Bowl quarterback and leader, for Brown, the team's fourth-year kicker.

"It's an ongoing joke," Brown said. "When it finally happened to him, I got a lot of gratification out of it. The hair thing, I guess."

Brown and Hasselbeck are, well, not blessed with full heads of hair. Brown has been mistaken for Hasselbeck time and again, even when Brown went "undercover" on a TV special to see if people he randomly interviewed knew who he was.

Funny how things change when you make a dramatic game-winning field goal. Which is exactly what Brown did last Sunday at St. Louis.

The 54-yard boot made Brown the first NFL kicker since Pete Stoyanovich in 1997 with a game-winning field goal of at least 54 yards on the game's final play with his team trailing at the time. Brown also became the first kicker in NFL history to make three field goals of at least 49 yards in the fourth quarter (49, 49, 54).

Longest last-play, game-winning field goals in NFL


63 yards

Nov. 8, 1970 | New Orleans' Tom Dempsey hits a 63-yarder against Detroit.

56 yards

Oct. 23, 2005 | Minnesota's Paul Edinger makes a 56-yarder against Green Bay.

54 yards (tie)

Oct. 15, 2006 | Seattle's Josh Brown ties for the third-longest game-winning field goal.

"I'm not so sure he couldn't have kicked one longer," Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren said. "He was really hitting it very well."

Brown was named the NFC special teams player of the week for his performance. It's the second time in his career Brown has received the honor.

In making his fourth game-winning, walk-off field goal, Brown improved to 9 of 15 on kicks from 50 or more yards. At 60 percent, that's tied for best in Seahawks history. He also bailed out running back Maurice Morris, who fumbled earlier and almost cost the Seahawks the win when the Rams came back to take a brief lead before Brown's winner.

NFL Films cameras captured Morris whispering something into Brown's ear as the Seahawks walked off the field in celebration.

" 'Way to go.' That's it," Brown said.

Kickers are generally separated from the rest of the team. They don't practice much with everyone else, and generally do their own thing with the punter/holder and long snapper. Brown, Hasselbeck says, is a normal guy who doesn't avoid the others. But Holmgren is the type to let his kickers be, unless it is to offer a word of encouragement or get angry about a miss or bad kickoff.

"I don't get that close to the kickers," Holmgren said. "Josh is a little bit hyper ... I don't always do this well, but if you miss a tough one, you kind of encourage them because you're going to need them again. That's what happened the other day."

Brown missed a 34-yard try Sunday when it bounced off both uprights.

"I was really disappointed we missed that first one because we finally got going a little bit in the second half, and now here we get what I would consider a chip-shot field goal and we miss it," Holmgren said. "Your first reaction is you just want to go strangle somebody. And really that wouldn't be the right thing to do."

The strangling part was a joke. Holmgren is fond of Brown, explaining that Brown seems to thrive under pressure.

"I tell him, 'Kick it between the posts,' " Holmgren said. "Not to the side. Right down the middle. That's what I tell him every time."

Brown sings. He's a country music fan. He likes karaoke. He's got personality.

"Hopefully he stays with us for a while," Hasselbeck said. "To have confidence in a guy that he can make it when the game is on the line, tough kick, loud stadium, it is a nice feeling."

Brown has a routine when the pressure is on. He isn't fazed when teams try to "ice" him, or call a timeout just before a big kick. In that event, he walks back to the sideline, swings his leg a few times by himself and walks back onto the field.

"I have no superstitions," Brown said. "I'm just redoing what I did before. A lot of times you can get on the sideline and you try to think about this and that, and it's just unnecessary at that point.

"If you can't get yourself to do it by then, you probably aren't going to have any success at it."

Missing in the clutch is no laughing matter in the NFL. You can lose your job the next day for a big miss. So when Arizona's Neil Rackers hooked a potential game-winner on Monday night against Chicago, Brown felt his pain.

"Neil's just a friend of mine," Brown said. He tried calling Rackers to offer encouragement. "As a professional to another, I care about his success."

That part is no joke.

José Miguel Romero: 206-464-2409 or jromero@seattletimes.com