Jarred Hayne, one of the top stars of the Australian National Rugby League, which is the premier Rugby League comp in the country, has left the sport and is heading over to the States to try and play NFL.
Not sure how much coverage it’s gotten over there, but I’ve seen a couple of reports from US sports shows on it. Although they could be the end of the show crazy story for all I know.
By all accounts he’s got an offer from the Detroit Lions and Seattle Seahawks to have a crack at a trial.
Curious for anyone who knows NFL really well, whether he’s got a snowball’s chance in hell at making the cut? Here’s a youtube clip of his rugby league highlights package*
He’s a big bloke, 6’1", strong, very athletic with great footwork. He however has no background with American Football, so doesn’t have that instinctual understanding of the game.
My amateur thought was that he might get a start as a kick returner. I presume that job is less technical than say a running back or a wide receiver.
Curious on anyone’s thought or opinions.
Clip is kind of long at 11 minutes, but you can get a good idea in the first minute or so.
It is very hard to tell from the clips, but my first reaction is that I’m not sure he’s fast enough to be a kick returner. One article I just read said he’d make a good gunner, which seems quite plausible.
Well it’s pleasant to see an Aussie try out in the US for a non punting role! He is fast but IMO not fast enough for a kick return, his main skill is that he can read the opposition well and out foot work them of course he is pretty quick as well.
To me he has a shot as a running back, not a big one but an agile one who can run to space for a QB pass. It’s a tough job and of course a lot of competition from blokes who grew up trying to remember 50 odd plays.
All I know he is one of the best rugby league (not union different game) and has played at the highest levels but how he stands up to the head forward spearing tackles in NFL vs the grappling wrestling style tackles in NRL will be interesting.
Hope he does make it as it’s a brave move and he’s a great player at the height of his powers. Be surprised, though - remarkable athleticism is par for the course in the NFL, and so much of what he does seems to be spur-of-the-moment, creative ball play. Not sure if this free-thinking is in demand in American football, which is a far more regimented and strategic game. Would like to be proven wrong though.
I think the first time he tries to turn a corner and gets waffled by a defensive end he is going to regret his decision. No arm tackles there. And NFL linemen are incredibly quick. As a running back it is not his top speed or his open field ability to make people miss that will be the most important factor. It will be how fast he can accelerate from a standstill and how he can read holes in the line. The former is something that hasn’t been shown and the latter is something NFL running backs start learning when they are 8.
Watching part of the video, I’d see him as perhaps a punt returner, gunner or change of pace RB, or all three. Doesn’t seem to have the raw speed of a kickoff returner, especially since most of them start a few yards in the end zone.
These are all the traits he already has from rugby; there’s not a fundamental difference in avoiding tacklers and finding the hole between the two sports, and I doubt there’s a toughness issue.
Cheesesteak is right; his role is as a Danny Woodhead/Kevin Faulk type RB.
ISTM the biggest issues are going to be
in the passing game - if he can run routes, catch passes, pick up a blitzer, etc. Those things have no equivalent in rugby. He’ll also have to learn tackling American football style, but I think that will be easier.
I think it’ll be fascinating to see if Hayne makes it.
I think his biggest obstacle will be trying to come to grips with the hyper-specialisation of the American game, and the near total control that coaches have. All his life he’s played a game where coaches set a broad strategy and players than react to the situations in front of them when the game develops, rather than each play being a scripted move by the entire team. Most of his highlights for instance come from broken play which doesn’t really occur in American football as far as I know.
I hope he finds a place on a team, it’ll be fun to watch. I have serious doubts though. Anyone remember Brock Lesnar’s Vikings tryout? Every year there are heaps of players that don’t make it who all have incredible athleticism and specialization, a guy with no background in the sport is at a near insurmountable disadvantage.
Man, I have to disagree with you there. I don’t watch rugby at all, but the first thing that struck me about the video linked in the OP was how different the line of scrimmage (for lack of a better term) is between that sport and American football.
From what I saw in the video, the defense on rugby was essentially playing a zone coverage along a single line, with the offense also spread out along that same line as it advances towards the goal. The idea of finding a hole seems to be based more on exploiting the distance between two defenders, or passing the ball to another advancing offensive player. There doesn’t seem to be much, if any, of a secondary. To my eye, it almost looks like every play is more similar to an NFL open-field run where a return guy, receiver, or RB simply has to beat one or two defenders. Like in this sequence of scores.
The closest thing I’ve ever seen to that in American football is The Play in 1982, and that’s one of the craziest things that’s ever happened. American football is so much more about the defense converging on the ball, especially in depth, and the offense having to make blocks to open up smaller running lanes in bigger piles of people. There’s just no need for the defense to spread itself out in that way, because runners virtually never lateral the ball, and very rarely reverse their field.
I think it would be very cool if this guy could make it to an NFL team, but just superficially it looks like the holes that have to be exploited by a rugby player are totally different than what an NFL player faces.
The biggest difference, if I’m understanding rugby correctly, is that you can’t block in rugby. So while I think RB is probably the best fit, I’d be gravely concerned about his blocking skills. This is particularly worrisome since I get the feeling that “3rd down RB” would be the best fit, and that requires the most blitz pickups.
Very much so - rugby and league are very lateral games where backlines use width to create space against the defence. Once the defensive line is broken there’s usually only a fullback to beat to score.
The Play looks to me like a pretty standard use of offloads and draw and passto stretch a defence laterally. If American Football *were *played that way Hayne would slot right in, but of course it isn’t.
I was about to say the same thing. The holes that NFL players have to exploit are tiny. Or they don’t yet exist when you have to start to make your move. A running back has to be able to read the defense and also know all the blocking schemes of his own line. By the time you are talking about the NFL that is very complex on both sides of the ball. It is not just two lines of big people slamming into each other. NFL running backs have probably been doing that since they were 8 years old. A rugby player who has never played football is going to be very surprised when he sees the playbook and how complex everything is.
He looks like a really good open field runner. A running back gets a long open field run maybe once a game. They make their money turning 3 yard runs into 5 yard runs. Average 5 yards a run and you’ll be a star.
No one is going to say rugby players aren’t tough. But it is mostly arm tackles. He will feel the difference when J.J. Watt hits him.
Hayne is a fantastic ‘broken field’ runner. That’s where the first run and pass has happened and somehow the defence has lost it’s shape - but so, maybe, has the offence (In NRL, plays are rarely rehearsed beyond the first tackle and pass). It then becomes a case of using your instincts, speed and skills to create something. So, as many have said, he’s going to find it difficult to adapt to the rigid, rehearsed ‘everyone-has-a-role’ of NFL plays, that last 3 seconds.
The dream scenario to use Hayne would be in defence - if the defence could recover a fumble and then immediately give the ball to Hayne, then he could do his stuff and improvise. But that isn’t happening.
Good on him for giving it a go - he’s reached the top in one sport (Played for his country, best player in the game etc) - now, he wants to try something new. If he fails - it’s only sport.
I said “not a fundamental difference,” not “they are exactly the same.”
The object is still “avoid getting hit by people.” Yes, the holes are definitely smaller, and NFL teams have blocking schemes that can be complex at times (though that’s much more an issue for the linemen, not the back), but for the running back, 90% of the time it still boils down to “find the hole, run through the hole” and that was his basic job in rugby as well.
Other things he’d have to learn are completely different from rugby: catching passes/kicks, running routes, picking up blitzers. We can’t even look at rugby films to see how they compare, because those skills don’t even exist in that sport.
I mean, I’m skeptical he’s gonna make it, if for no other reason than his age: if he was 23, someone might think about sticking him on the practice squad for a season and seeing what happens. At 27, he has to convince someone he’s an upgrade right away, and I suspect that hill will be too much to climb. But if he comes close and it’s just one thing that fells him, I doubt the one thing will be “he couldn’t find the hole.”
And I’m saying I think there is a fundamental difference, like how both baseball and cricket involve a bat and a ball but the skills are quite different. That’s why I said “it looks like the holes that have to be exploited by a rugby player are totally different than what an NFL player faces.”
I would sure love to see what Jarryd and 10 other ex-Eels could do against an NFL squad in a Cal-Stanford type situation. My guess is that the NFL side would way over-pursue not understanding how far those guys could lateral.
Jarryd Hayne has signed a $100,000 contract with the 49ers. Sounds like he still has a goal of being a running back, but his immediate training will focus on special teams, and perhaps as an H-back (which doesn’t seem to be in current use in the NFL). Link.
I’ll be rooting for him… mostly because I’m a 49ers fan and I think it’s an interesting story. But at the same time, I’d give it 50/50 odds whether he makes the team this fall.
A slash tag comes to my mind. TE/RB/LB. Yeah I added a defense position there. He seems pretty strong and quicker than most of the big guys. (Looks that way, anyways)