He was coaching youth football. Four days later, Matt Prater's kick won the Bills-Ravens game

Matt Prater was a volunteer assistant coach in a local youth football league last week. On Sunday he kicked the game-winner for the Buffalo Bills.

The last time Adam NeVille, the president of the San Tan Youth Football League, saw Matt Prater in person was Tuesday night, on a football field in their southeastern Phoenix suburb.

Prater, one of the league’s volunteer assistant coaches, was helping out with his son’s team in the 9-to-11-year-old division and was uniquely qualified for the role. Through last season he had played in every NFL season since 2007 as a kicker, including the last four with the Arizona Cardinals, and even held the league’s record for most field goals over 50 yards.

But when NeVille and Prater saw each other last week at practice, there was a real question as to whether Prater would be playing a 19th season at all. The day before, all 32 of the league’s teams had finalized their 53-man active rosters, and Prater was still a free agent.

Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen, right, with Matt Prater.Tina MacIntyre-Yee / Democrat and Chronicle via USA Today Network“He was playing center, running the offense for his son’s team,” NeVille said. “And next thing you know he’s telling me he’s got to take a new gig.”

That new gig came from the Buffalo Bills, a Super Bowl contender whose starting kicker had just injured himself. Prater was writing out a practice plan for his son’s team when he got word he would be signed by the Bills. After a red-eye flight from Arizona, the 41-year-old Prater landed in Buffalo, New York, before 7 a.m. Thursday. Talk about good first impressions at a new job: By 11 p.m. Sunday, he’d kicked the game-winning field goal to open the Bills’ season with a 41-40 victory over Baltimore that may stand as one of the season’s most improbable comebacks.