Sebastian Janikowski is 39, which is ancient by NFL standards.
But the Raiders place-kicker, who is entering the final season of a five-year deal, isn’t planning to step aside for a younger player. He has no retirement plans. How long does he want to play?
“Until they kick me out,” he recently told reporters.
Of course, Janikowski has plenty of reasons to stick around. He’s due to make a base salary of $4.05 million in 2017, and he’s enjoying the fact the Raiders again are a franchise on the rise. The longest-tenured Raider, a first-round pick by Oakland in 2000, had the chance to play in a Super Bowl after the 2002 season, but then had to endure a playoff drought until 2016. Now, the Raiders are being discussed as a Super Bowl contender again.
Plus, Janikowksi remains very good. In 2016 he made 29 of 35 field-goal attempts, including three from 50 or more yards, and was 10 of 11 from the 40 through 49 yard lines. For his career he’s played a franchise-record 268 games and is the team’s all-time leading scorer with 1,799 points (which ranks 10th all-time in the NFL).
And, says special teams coach Brad Seely, Janikowski still wants to get better. As good as he’s been, Janikowski believes he can improve.
“He’s very receptive to coaching,” Seely told the media recently. “He’s very coachable, and I think it’s his work ethic. Guys don’t stay in the league as long as he has without having a good work ethic. But until you actually coach him day to day, you see what this guy is all about, and there’s a reason he’s still playing at this level.
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“He takes care of his body, he really works hard in practice, he wants to be good at his craft and I can’t say enough about him in that I’ve coached a lot of great kickers in my career, and you just put him in that list of guys.”
Janikowski is excited about this new season, with all the new talent that has joined the roster. He’s eager to see what the Raiders can accomplish.
“We can make the playoffs, but the goal is to win the whole thing,” Janikowski told Vic Tafur of the San Francisco Chronicle. “Playoffs is not going to be good enough for us. I’m shooting for the ultimate goal, a championship.”
