Fake it till you make it. That was Pat McAfee’s mantra as draft day rolled around in 2009. On paper, he had done plenty at West Virginia University: school records for games played (51), points (384), and extra points made (210), plus the second-best punting average in program history. But numbers only carry you so far when the phone finally rings. When the Indianapolis Colts called with a question he wasn’t exactly expecting, McAfee simply went ahead and said yes without a thought.

Only that eventually angered veteran kicker Adam Vinatieri. In fact, back in 2018, McAfee sat down with Rich Eisen and shared the wild story of how he bluffed his way into the NFL. Hear it from the man himself.

“Mr. Polian [former general manager], he asked me, I don’t know if it was via phone or during a workout, something happened,” McAfee shared on The Rich Eisen Show in 2018. “He was like, ‘You know how to hold if we were to draft you to punt, right? And nobody was looking for me to punt,’ So, I was like, absolutely, ‘Yeah, yeah, I absolutely know how to do that.'”

The opportunity to be in the NFL forced McAfee to lie at first, but he came out and told the truth to Colts veteran Vinatieri.

“I’d never done it in my entire life. So, by then, I get drafted. Vinatieri knows that I was a kicker in college,” said McAfee. “He calls me the day after. He goes, ‘ Have you ever held before?’ I’m like, Vini, I got to tell you this. I lied right to Mr. Polian’s face. By that point, I’d already been drafted. So our first conversation was like a congratulations, and then he was very mad at me. And then he sent me to a holding camp in North Carolina with Ken Walter, the guy who held for him in New England.”

However, things turned out in McAfee’s favor. During his three-day mini-camp in 2009, the player talked about Vinatieri being a source of inspiration and a veteran presence. They even became buddies on and off the field.

And when McAfee went public in 2017 about stepping away from the Indianapolis Colts and the NFL altogether to chase a media career with Barstool Sports, it likely didn’t shock Vinatieri one bit. The two had logged endless hours side by side, in season and out, so this wasn’t some out-of-the-blue revelation. At some point before the announcement, those long days together had already turned into real conversations about what came next.

Regardless, even if he saw it coming, Vinatieri admitted it stung to watch McAfee officially call it a career. With that decision, a standout Colts special teams trio, one that also featured Pro Bowl long snapper Matt Overton, was suddenly no longer intact. But Vinatieri and McAfee’s friendship started off rough.

“Vinatieri would come to my room in training camp at night, and he would throw me like 500 balls at night,” McAfee told Eisen. “It was very much like, ‘Hey kid, I put quite a legacy here, I’m not gonna let you come in here and ruin it because you lied to Bill Polian’s face.'”

It all worked out well, as McAfee learnt the skill of holding well, and helped the Colts even make the Super Bowl in his rookie season. Although the team lost 31-17 at the hands of the New Orleans Saints, McAfee punted for the Colts in the game as Vinatieri was out for the entirety of the playoffs.

While McAfee’s time with the Colts helped him earn two Pro Bowl selections, things were expected to be completely different for the media personality before the draft.

Pat McAfee went from Dallas dreams to a different reality

McAfee was the 222nd overall pick in the draft, but he revealed that there were teams aside from the Colts who had expressed their desire to add him to their roster.

“I thought I was going to the Cowboys. I was told before the draft by Joe DeCamillis, special teams, ‘Hey, you’re going to be a Cowboy. You’re going to be kicking for us down here.’ I was like, ‘Sick, I’m going to be a Dallas Cowboy,'” said McAfee on his show in April. “We partied hard. I mean, we had a great weekend. We had a lot of fun. Then, when it came Sunday to get drafted or whatever, we’re like, ‘All right, let’s settle in.’ They drafted another guy, a kid, David, out of USC.”

McAfee ended up getting picked by the Colts, as he got a call from Bill Polian, who had just become president of the Colts.

In the end, it worked out well for McAfee. He went on to record 659 kickoffs for 42,797 yards in 127 career games with Indianapolis and became a key player for the team. Although his career may have started with a lie, he worked hard on developing the skills required to hold the ball, eventually becoming an asset to the organization that took a chance on him.