Australian rugby league superstar will take a run at the NFL
Try to imagine the madness that would ensue if Tom Brady or LeBron James announced they were walking away from their sport to go play a different one. And not just any sport, but a sport on the other side of the planet. It would be Michael Jordan-plays-baseball outrage times a dozen. And its equivalent is happening right now in Australia.
Jarryd Hayne, Australia’s highest-paid rugby league player, is walking away from his sport at the absolute pinnacle to chase a dream — not even a promise, a dream — of playing in the NFL.
Hayne is a classic sports success story, going from living in government housing to a $1 million annual salary at the peak of Australia’s rugby league game. He’s a two-time “Daily M Medal” winner, the equivalent of an NFL MVP award.
“I know some people might be upset about this,” Hayne said in a tearful Wednesday press conference, “but at the end of the day I am following my heart, and if people want to criticize me for that, so be it.”
Hayne will move to Los Angeles to begin training, with the intention of trying to latch on with an NFL team for next season. He said this has been a dream of his for years, but only now has he had the courage to attempt it. No team has yet inquired about his services, but that’s likely to change soon.
“I am leaving as the game’s highest paid player because I want to chase my dream,” Hayne said. “I’m heading over there as a blank canvas. It is crazy exciting.”
At the very least, the guy’s got stones. Check out his on-field moves right here:
Hayne has said he envisions himself as a kick return specialist, but dude’s got Bill Belichick-style tight end written all over him. He visited with the Seahawks earlier this year, and could also fit into an unconventional Pete Carroll gameplan.
An editorial in The Guardian gives a sense of the challenge that awaits Hayne:
While Hayne tears across [rugby league] parks like a ride-on Victa [a riding lawnmower] that’s sprung its driver, there’s an element of control to NFL running which could prove problematic for him. If you think about it, [rugby] thrives on its freelancing from the backfield, while NFL rushers generally run to a coordinated play, moving in a pre-set direction to follower blockers and find gaps in the line of scrimmage. You might say, isn’t it all just carrying a football at the end of the day, whether you’re motoring across the carpet-like surface of Ford Field in Detroit or kicking up dust at Leichhardt Oval? Well, tell that to the poor sap ploughing his way into four sumo-sized lineman 20 times a game. Following your front line into the fray is one thing: knowing when to retreat, spin and side step is another. There’s far less room to manoeuvre in the NFL, and given the size and speed of the defenders pursuing the runner, there’s certainly less time.”
Detroit’s Reggie Bush met Hayne this summer and came away convinced Hayne could be a running back. But Hayden Smith, a rugby player who had a short stint as a tight end for the Jets, notes that there are huge challenges beyond even the physical that await any player making the leap into the NFL without a lifetime’s worth of preparation.
“The first thing you have to understand is the language they use and the little nuances of what is actually happening on the field,” he told the Daily Telegraph late last year. “Only then can you start working on techniques. It is a long process before you can actually take to the field and contribute. It took me months to be able to coherently understand what was going on and that was after putting in 12 or 14-hour long days. The playbook would contain hundreds of plays and thousands of varieties. You only have a couple of seconds to react once we snap the ball.”
This may or may not work. But it’s going to be a fascinating journey one way or the other.
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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at [email protected] or find him on Twitter.
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