Louis Rees-Zammit sets off on a new adventure. Is it going to be a successful one?
It takes a pretty big news story to overshadow the squad releases for the 6 Nations, but that’s exactly what we got this week. Welsh wing superstar Louis Rees-Zammit announced that he was to leave the world of rugby with immediate effect to join the NFL’s International Player Pathway program, mere hours before he was to be selected for Wales. The reaction to this decision can mostly be summed up with one word: shock. The general consensus is that like many rugby players who have taken the same decision– Christian Wade, Christian Scotland-Williamson, and Alex Gray to name a few– Rees-Zammit will be unsuccessful. So what really are his chances, and why is it so hard for a rugby player to transfer to a sport which itself came from rugby?
The International Player Pathway program was established in 2017 to attract international athletes to join the NFL and to give them a clear path to reaching a roster. At its core, it allows teams from a given division to add an offseason roster spot for a player from the program, but the NFL has been doing more to actively bring the players up to speed. Whilst all of Christian Wade’s initial training was self-led, last year, the selected players undertook a 10-week intensive training camp to get them up to scratch, and it is thought Rees-Zammit will go through something similar. During this, he is likely to specialise in position, and then hope that a team picks him up for their pre-season training camp. Each team will have 3 preseason games, during which he’d get an opportunity to show his ability, and then the roster for the actual team will be cut down to just 53 players. To make this roster would mean that he is officially an NFL player. If he does not make it here, he is not out of hope. Much like with Wade, the team also have a number of spots on their practice squad, where the players can train with the main roster throughout the season. This will allow him the opportunity to go through an extra season of training and another pre-season cycle, to have a shot at the active roster again.
American football, like rugby, has positions very much divided by skill sets and body types. Just as a 6’5 skinny player is unlikely to make a good prop, a 6’5 skinny player is unlikely to make a good defensive lineman. Yet, most rugby players could find a position in which at least some of their skills could transfer well. Front-rowers have the power to make good offensive linemen; back-rowers have both the physicality and the speed to make good middle-linebackers. Most successful converts from rugby to the NFL have played as a kicker or punter, using their skills with the boot in a very specialised position, whilst the most successful convert (admittedly from rugby league), Jordan Mailata, has been a key member of the Philadelphia Eagles’s offensive line which helped the team reach the Super Bowl last season. Christian Wade, a smaller player with an eye for open space, was at the very least a competent running-back, with two long rushing touchdowns in pre-season games (albeit against third-string defenses).
Rees-Zammit is likely too tall to be a running back; the average height of NFL running backs is just 5’10, and with a lot more bulk than he has. The natural next position to consider is wide receiver, where height and speed provide a strong advantage. For Rees-Zammit to be a good wide receiver, however, he would have to learn a lot. Whereas the running-back is a fairly independent position, using instinct to find holes and open spaces (or running through the predesigned holes), wide receivers need to almost always follow their predesigned routes, from a playbook containing thousands of plays which are described in a small handful of words by the quarterback. Eyes for space and holes can only come once he has caught the ball, which relies on him running the right route first. One position which has missed the speculation regarding Rees-Zammit, but where he may actually fit well, is at cornerback. The single most transferable skill from rugby to American football is the open-field tackling, something which Rees-Zammit is particularly adept at. The position of cornerback requires such a skill; it also requires the pace to keep up with some of the fastest players in the game. As many people have pointed out in the past week, Tyreek Hill, widely considered the fastest wide receiver in the NFL (and also notably only converting to wide receiver once he had reached the pros), reached a top speed of 22mph this season, whilst Rees-Zammit hit 24mph. He is thus more than capable of keeping up, and whilst there would still be a considerable amount to learn, defenses use systems rather than plays, which would reduce this learning load. Furthermore, catching a pass is not particularly easy; as a cornerback catching a pass is a bonus, as it turns the ball over, but your main job is to prevent a catch from the wide receiver, and thus inability to catch would not be the be-all-and-end-all.
Rees-Zammit has the natural talent to be a good American football player. He is a world-class athlete in his own right, and this is exactly why the International Player Pathway program has sought him out. The deck is, however, stacked against him. American football is by far the largest sport in the USA– of the 100 most-watched broadcasts of 2023, 96 of them were American football games. It is, as much as football here, a part of the American culture. Kids start passing a ball with their parents at age 5; by age 12 they are playing middle-school football and settling on positions; by age 17, they are playing high school football and hoping to be scouted for a college scholarship; by 21, they are hoping to be drafted into the pros. This is occurring in every town in every state in the USA, and for many, it is their only way to change their life prospects, to earn millions and to support their family. As a result, from an early age, children dedicate their lives to becoming the best American football players they can. Arguably the best wide receiver of all time, Jerry Rice, famously used to practice by catching literal bricks on his dad’s construction site. Even players who change position have grown up in and around American football, living it, breathing it, breaking it down so they truly understand it. This makes Rees-Zammit’s job particularly difficult. Furthermore, as much as the International Player Pathway program has managed to get players onto rosters, it has only produced 4 players to make an active roster– those being the aforementioned Mailata, the British-born Efe Obada, and German-French players Jakob Johnson and David Bada. As such, the chances of success for Rees-Zammit are low.
The question must be asked, though: does it matter if he makes it? If he does make it, it will undoubtedly be a huge success, and it will show a young player taking a chance on something he is passionate about. The paychecks, too, are significantly larger than anything rugby has to offer. Yet, amidst the assumption he won’t make it is an implication that as a result, this decision is a mistake. This is simply not true. Rugby itself is a late-blooming sport, and as can be seen with the rise of women’s rugby, players can transfer from other sports and develop skills that allow them to become very good rugby players. Similarly, other sports provide tactical opportunities and learning points which can be used to improve rugby– the newly selected Lions head coach, Andy Farrell, was a convert from Rugby League, as was Kevin Sinfield, who transformed first Leicester Tigers’, and then England’s defence into something to be feared. Equally, playing American football is unlikely to change the skills which make Rees-Zammit such a dangerous rugby player– while Wade has not necessarily returned to his top form, it’s hard to argue he was at his top form when he left, and has dealt with injuries since his return; he also left at 27 and returned at 31 years old, whilst if his NFL dreams are unsuccessful, the 22-year-old Rees-Zammit will likely be in his mid-20s. As long as teams are willing to give him a try (which isn’t hard to imagine), he can return to the rugby world. As such, we should not bemoan a player for chasing his dreams, however unlikely they may be. We should instead applaud the bravery to make a decision which puts his own dreams first.
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