Foxborough is becoming a flee market

How many Super Bowls can Bill Belichick win without Adam Vinatieri's right instep at his disposal? He's going to get the chance to find out.

Vinatieri became the latest defection from the Patriots roster when he reached an agreement in principle with the Indianapolis Colts yesterday that satisfied his desire to receive both guaranteed money and a less daunting field to kick from than the often frozen tundra of Razor Blade Field. The final details were expected to be worked out late last evening, and Vinatieri was scheduled to fly to Indianapolis today to participate in an introductory news conference for a man who will need no introduction.

Vinatieri is the most high-profile Patriot yet to leave New England this offseason, although the list is growing. He leaves after a phenomenal 10-year run in which he had among his 20 game-winning kicks two that won Super Bowls plus a remarkable 45-yard knuckleball through a blizzard that sent the Patriots into overtime against the Raiders in a playoff game Vinatieri would ultimately win with a 23-yard kick. That final snowy field goal closed down Foxboro Stadium for good and buried all the ghosts that had haunted the franchise in that old place.

Now Vinatieri himself is an apparition, a memory gone for a $3.5 million signing bonus the Patriots refused to pay, gone to a domed stadium where he is 10 for 10 in his career. According to a management source within the Green Bay Packers, who were also seeking his services, Vinatieri made it clear he was looking for both the guaranteed money New England had denied him and an opportunity to close out a potential Hall of Fame career in a dome.

No Patriot fan will soon forget the 48-yard kick that split the uprights in New Orleans on Feb. 3, 2002, to win Super Bowl XXXVI, beating the St. Louis Rams in one of the biggest upsets in Super Bowl history, nor will they forget how he calmly did it again two years later to beat the Carolina Panthers in Super Bowl XXXVIII on a 41-yarder with four seconds to play. Had there been no Vinatieri in those games, one has to wonder, would so many residents of Patriot Nation still be chanting ''In Bill we trust, In Bill we trust"? Especially as one familiar face after another leaves without a goodbye call to their former boss?

The Patriots say someone from their office repeatedly called Willie McGinest before he signed with Cleveland last week, but they admit they haven't talked to him since last season ended. Since McGinest's cellphone was working fine, does that mean they had the wrong number or that he declined to pick up the phone?

The personnel department repeatedly asked David Givens to call Belichick in the final days before he left town but he refused to do so until his agent intervened and asked him to the night before Givens signed a five-year, $24 million contract with the Tennessee Titans that dwarfed New England's $17.5 million offer. Givens made the call, but it made no difference in his decision.

Now it is Vinatieri, arguably the best clutch kicker in football, who is gone without a trace after rejecting New England's pre-free agency offer that would have made him a $3 million kicker but without a dime of guaranteed money. He fired his agent, Jonathan Hurst, who works for Belichick's old lawyer in Cleveland, Neil Cornrich, after Hurst apparently had no offer ready to present to the Packers. Less than a week later, Vinatieri came to an agreement with the Colts.

According to sources close to Vinatieri, he was not willing to risk playing in New England again without a guaranteed signing bonus after seeing what had happened to Drew Bledsoe, Lawyer Milloy, Ty Law, and several other veterans. The Patriots, of course, are well within their rights to conduct their business however they like, and they have three gleaming Super Bowl trophies to back them up, but how much did Vinatieri have to do with each of those victories?

He did not win the third one over the Philadelphia Eagles in so dramatic a fashion as the first two, but even in that game, it was his 22-yard field goal midway through the fourth quarter that ultimately was the margin of victory. And now he is gone away over money, money that Patriots apologists keep insisting they'll pay someone. Let us hope it's not Mike Vanderjagt.

New England had former Minnesota Vikings kicker Paul Edinger in yesterday for a visit. Edinger is one of the few remaining veteran free agent kickers available, other than the mercurial Vanderjagt. Last year, Edinger converted 73.5 percent of his kicks (25 of 34) but he was only 14 of 23 beyond 29 yards, which is hardly what they have grown used to in Foxborough over the past decade.

When word of Vinatieri's defection began to leak yesterday afternoon, many callers to both of Boston's sports talk radio stations lamented the loss and seemed to question for the first time the decisions being made in these early days of free agency, even though Belichick's approach has usually been to sit out the early weeks when the big money is thrown around and then try to bottom-feed, signing young but often not fully tested talent for less money.

That may be all well and good when the search is for a young linebacker (although last year that netted the Patriots Monty Beisel), but there is only one kicker to a team and, as Belichick's old mentor Bill Parcells learned the hard way last season, if you don't have one, you can count on finding yourself watching the playoffs rather than participating in them.

Ironically, Vinatieri will replace the most accurate but also the most controversial kicker in the game in Indianapolis. For all his vaunted accuracy, Vanderjagt missed two key kicks in games against New England and this past season shanked badly a 46-yarder against the Steelers that would have sent their playoff game into overtime. That miss propelled Pittsburgh on its run to a Super Bowl championship, while the Colts went home saddled again with a reputation for not being able to win the biggest games.

Adam Vinatieri won every one of those kind of games when he was called upon by Bill Belichick, who was in Florida watching major league baseball games this week while the man who brought him two Super Bowl victories left town without so much as a final discussion about staying with his old boss.