“For a while in the off-season Louis was catching passes from Patrick Mahomes and training alongside Travis Kelce. [Practice squad players] are in the same practices, same meetings, they are part of the team but just not activated on game day. It is a fantastic learning experience. They are in the same rooms as the starters, the Pro Bowlers, the Super Bowl winners. It’s an invaluable learning opportunity,” Dulgerian explains.
“With rugby, people assume it’s a direct correlation and transfer of skills, and it’s really not. They can jump right in and do some of the things that we ask, but there is quite a bit of difference with the type of movements. The thing you cannot teach with crossover athletes is the level of physicality they’re accustomed to and that they like. If we look at premium basketball players or Olympians, they might not be used to that kind of physicality. That’s an advantage rugby players have. There is still a lot of playing lower to the ground, more bend, quite a difference. But that uncoachable desire for physicality, you can check that box right away.”
Not forgetting kickers, either, although the IPP program for those specialist positions is in its infancy. Tadhg Leader, the former Connacht and USA fly-half, now works as an international kicking coach for the NFL. Today, Leader is independently hosting a tryout session at London Welsh RFC for any football or rugby players who want to give kicking an American football a go.
Few kickers from rugby have attempted so far to make the switch aside from Harry Mallinder, previously with Northampton who was part of last year’s IPP intake as a punter. Stephen Myler, the former Northampton fly-half who retired at the end of the last season, recently attended one kicking session out of curiosity. The transition is also harder than people realise, given there are no kicking tees in the NFL and a rugby ball by comparison to an American football is “like a balloon”, as Leader puts it.
“Most are surprised how difficult it is when kicking to a high level under duress,” he notes. One success story from last year’s IPP is Charlie Smyth, the Irish kicker with a Gaelic football background who is currently signed to the New Orleans Saints’ practice squad. “He will be playing regular season games in the NFL in the next year or two, they absolutely love him,” adds Leader, adding that what separated Smyth from the rest was a combination of his GAA background, mental strength and young age at 22.
What seems clear is that the potential success next season of Smyth or Rees-Zammit or Clayton, if they make a main roster, will lead to more emails flooding into the NFL IPP inbox expressing an interest in leaving rugby for the NFL, given there is now an obvious pathway for players to follow. Dulgerian adds: “What I hear a lot is I’ve always loved American football, I grew up watching this team, I just didn’t know how to get into it. Some say that if they had American football growing up they would have played that over rugby.” Instead of being a one-off, Rees-Zammit’s switch may be the start of a potential surge.
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