The Jets’ 30-28 win over the Falcons Monday night in Atlanta was a microcosm of Nick Folk’s anonymous — somewhat taken-for-granted — existence as Gang Green’s kicker.
The headlines from that game blared about rookie quarterback Geno Smith’s coming of age inside the Georgia Dome and the Jets’ defensive front dominating the Atlanta offensive line.
Folk?
All he did was win the game with a 43-yard field goal as time expired. It was Folk’s sixth game-winner in his three-plus seasons with the team and his second this season for the 3-2 Jets.
That Folk, whose nickname in high school was “Iceman,’’ trumped Falcons quarterback Matt “Matty Ice’’ Ryan in his own building came as little surprise to those who know Folk best — his former special teams coach, Mike Westhoff, current special teams coach Ben Kotwica, his two younger brothers, Greg and Kyle, and his good friend from the Red Bulls soccer club, Dax McCarty.
His uncanny success in the clutch has come as no surprise to Folk, either.
“I’ve liked doing this since I was little,’’ Folk said Thursday. “I always took the penalty kicks in soccer games. I’ve always embraced that role. I like having that kind of pressure. I don’t want to run from it, I use it as motivation.’’
If there is one element to Folk’s career that defines his resolve best, it is how the Jets have constantly brought experienced kickers into training camp each season to compete for his job and how he has staved off every one of them.
Four kickers have been brought in and all four are currently kicking for other NFL teams. Nick Novak (2011) is with the Chargers. Josh Brown (2012) is with the Giants. Billy Cundiff (this summer) is with the Browns. And Dan Carpenter, who was brought in for the final 2013 preseason game after Folk missed a field goal late in the third preseason game against the Giants, is with the Bills.
“You’d like to think once a team finds something they like,’’ Folk said, “they’d like to keep it.’’
With the Jets, and in the fickle world of NFL kickers, not so much.
“Nick was always a guy that you could see the brilliance and then you would turn around and say, ‘Well, how did that happen?’ ’’ Westhoff told The Post on Thursday. “That was always disturbing. He was probably challenged in training camp as hard as anyone has been challenged. He had to compete to survive or he’d be out. Nobody gave him anything. And now he’s competing at an extremely high level — extremely high.’’
Kotwica, who replaced the retired Westhoff, believes the outside completion each summer has made Folk into the kicker who has made 8-of-9 field goals in the final two minutes of regulation or in overtime for the Jets.
“Those situations have developed a resolve and a hardened kicker that feels very, very confident about himself when he walks out there,’’ Kotwica said. “Knocking in two game-winners in five games attests to the mentality and makeup he has.’’
Greg and Kyle Folk are aware of that mentality, because they both tried to emulate it as they became athletes. Greg Folk, a soccer player at UCLA, was a part of the U.S. national team when he was younger and was drafted by the Los Angeles Galaxy of Major League Soccer. Kyle was a kicker at Washington, where he booted game-winning field goals to beat USC in both 2009 and 2010.
“He kind of set the standard for my younger brother Erik and I as far as that competitive nature and really being focused when those pressure moments do come up,’’ Greg Folk told The Post on Thursday. “He’s always looked forward to those situations. Growing [up] playing soccer, he was always the guy who took the penalty kicks. He enjoys those pressure moments. There’s just something in him that kicks in that instead of shying away from the pressure, he enjoys it.’’
Since 1991, Folk (44-of-47, 93.6 percent) is one of only three NFL kickers with a minimum of 25 field goals who have a fourth-quarter accuracy of better than 90 percent. The Patriots’ Stephen Gostkowski (53-of-55, 96.4 percent) and the Broncos’ Matt Prater (41-of-44, 93.2 percent) are the other two.
“He’s been one of the most consistent clutch kickers in the NFL,’’ McCarty, the Red Bulls’ midfielder, told The Post on Thursday. “He’s played in two of the most pressure-packed media places in the NFL in Dallas and New York. And as an athlete, you have to be able to handle pressure-packed situations if you want to be successful and Nick has done that brilliantly.
“He’s a guy with a strong mental makeup. That latest kick [in Atlanta] obviously has become the standard for him.’’