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    • ‘Cold-blooded’ Bates scripts provide the perfect ending for the Lions comeback
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    ‘Cold-blooded’ Bates scripts provide the perfect ending for the Lions comeback

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    Houston — Everyone knows Jake Bates’ leg by now.

    But late Sunday night, after the Lions’ kicker netted another game-winner to spark an improbable comeback and beat his hometown Houston Texans, Bates simply needed a hand.

    In the back corner of the visitors’ locker room at NRG Stadium, Bates struggled to carry all his belongings, carrying an equipment bag in one hand, a duffel bag in the other and two game balls in his arms.

    One came from his head coach, Dan Campbell, while the other was from the NBC “Sunday Night Football” crew after Bates kicked a tying 58-yard kick late in the fourth quarter – the third-longest kick in league history franchise – and as time expired, he drilled a 52-yarder to win it.

    And for a man whose remarkable backstory is quickly becoming an NFL legend — just 18 months ago he began a sales career at the Acme Brick Company here in Houston — this is all still a bit much to handle.

    Bates couldn’t really remember what he said when Campbell picked him during Sunday night’s locker room celebration. (“I keep passing out at times like that,” he laughed.) And he even found it difficult to find the words to describe his emotions as he held his balance and then held his pose as he watched that final kick that sailed just inside the goal post.

    “I really can’t, because I mean, I just don’t deserve this,” Bates said, shaking his head. “I was a football player growing up. I idolized football players in the NFL. And just to be here is surreal. I still find myself pinching myself a little.”

    He also braced himself after this match. Because as soon as he left the locker room, he was on his way to a reunion of sorts with a huge crowd of family and friends in attendance Sunday night.

    Bates grew up in Tomball, Texas – a forty-minute drive north of downtown Houston – and all week he had been hearing from his high school friends who are now Texas season ticket holders.

    “Even when I went to the game today, I still got friends (texting), ‘Hey, I’ll be there,’” Bates said.

    But what they all got to see on Sunday, on a night when Jared Goff threw a career-worst five interceptions to lead Detroit to a 23-7 halftime lead, was something Lions fans are quickly becoming accustomed to this fall. This was Bates’ second game-winning kick in the past month – his 44-yarder with 15 seconds left beat the division-rival Vikings in Minnesota – and the 25-year-old rookie is still perfect on the season, making all 14 of his field goal attempts, including three from more than 50 yards.

    ‘He’s well wired’

    Not bad for someone who started playing football as a joke in high school. He didn’t try college football until he was a junior, and even then never attempted a field goal in a game. (Bates was just a kickoff specialist at Texas State and Arkansas.) A brief NFL tryout last summer — with mostly the Texans — kept him from hitting the bricks, so to speak. And a 64-yard field goal at Ford Field in his UFL debut with the Michigan Panthers in March put him on the Lions’ radar.

    It didn’t take long through training camp and the preseason for the coaches and front office to decide “he’s in the right place,” as general manager Brad Holmes said. And if you ask his teammates now what they expect when Bates lines up for a try, they’ll all tell you the same thing.

    “I have a lot of confidence in him,” Goff said after Sunday night’s comeback win. “He’s doing as well as anyone in the league right now. … It’s really cool for a guy so young and with so much experience to walk out there and – cold-blooded, twice now – knock them both down.

    Campbell’s thoughts at the end of Sunday night’s emotional rollercoaster ride immediately went back to the Lions’ practice on Thursday at Allen Park. He got the team through a late-game situation where the first-team offense had the ball on its own 40-yard line with six seconds left and one timeout, requiring only a field goal. Goff completed a pass to Amon-Ra St. Brown to get the ball to the opponent’s 43, Campbell stopped the clock with 1 second left, and Bates and the field goal team went out for a 61-yarder for the to try for victory.

    “And he did a good job,” Campbell recalled Sunday. “This was outside, with a light wind in his face. And man, you could just feel that the team, and all of us, just have confidence. That was big. So it was the first thing I thought of when we got there. … It just made me feel good.” I just felt like he was going to make it, you know? And he did. He stepped up and nailed it.”

    Bates credits the rest of the kicking team — especially his holder, Jack Fox, and long-snapper Hogan Hatten, a fellow newcomer — for helping make it look easier than it is.

    “I mean, Jack has been doing it at the highest level for a number of years now, and Hogan and I want to get to where he is,” Bates said. “But to be in a room with those two guys who take their craft so seriously – they care about it, want to do well and want me to do well – it’s a really good feeling.”

    But he also relies on a mental approach that, it seems, is growing stronger every day. Whether it’s a chip shot attempt in the first quarter, or a pressure-filled kick like the one he got on Sunday, he tells himself: “Don’t change anything. Don’t make the moment bigger than it needs to be.”

    At least not until the moments afterwards. As soon as the winning kick fell, Bates took off with his arms raised in celebration and his teammates gave chase as they poured onto the field. Once they caught him, a few of them put him on their shoulders.

    “I’ve never been so lifted up,” he said. “That was a cool moment.”

    And while “it almost feels like it’s too scripted, too good to be true,” he said, the extra baggage he carried with him after the game was a reminder that it wasn’t.

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    @JohnNiyo

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