Photograph: Stéphanie Lecocq/Reuters
Louis Rees-Zammit is the latest rugby player to turn his talents to the NFL. He follows in the path of Jarryd Hayne and Christian Wade, two former internationals who exited rugby at or near their prime to dabble with American football.
Rees-Zammit announced on Tuesday that he would be leaving Wales before the Six Nations to join the NFL’s international player pathway Program (IPPP), a 10-week initiative that gives athletes from around the world a chance to earn a spot on an NFL roster.
The number of overseas players in the NFL has steadily grown in recent years. We’ve had a Scottish punter, Australian linemen and an English pass-rusher, all of whom, like Rees-Zammit, had limited exposure to the sport before reaching the highest level.
Still Rees-Zammit’s odds of making the league, in the kindest reading, are long – very few IPPP players have gone on to meaningful careers in the NFL. In rugby, he’s a dynamic athlete. In the NFL, he’s just another fast, 6ft 2in, 200lb player in a sport that churns out hundreds of them every year from elite college programs. It is a league where the people whose job it is to throw the ball can do this when asked to run:
Or this:
It’s not that Rees-Zammit isn’t an excellent athlete, it’s the fact that he’s competing against hundreds of other excellent athletes, who have been playing – and learning the nuances of – a complex sport for years. Standing out in that ecosystem is tough. Even tougher: getting to grips with the complexities of a specific position or a team’s playbook.
There are typically thousands of plays in an NFL playbook. The Rams’ famed 2001 playbook, of the Greatest Show on Turf fame, had upwards of 3,000 individual calls. And every play comes drenched with subtleties for each position – a simple passing route can have hundreds of different alterations.
Related: Louis Rees-Zammit quits rugby in shock move to pursue dream of NFL career
It is a league where…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/rugby-star-louis-rees-zammit-103027524.html
Author : The Guardian
Publish date : 2024-01-17 10:30:27
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