LRZ to NFL? WTF!

A look at the transition from Rugby to American Football

When I was at school, I knew a guy who was a giant. Standing at 6’8”, he was a warrior on the rugby pitch and a champion of Cornish wrestling. He was also a supremely intelligent boy, so imagine my surprise when he announced he would be joining London’s NFL academy to play Offensive Line.

Not to underhandedly bash the NFL academy, but it’s been shown that the transfer of skills from Rugby to American Football rarely results in success. For what it’s worth, he’s playing D1 O-Line in Hawaii now, so what do I know.

The Rugby to NFL pipeline will never see more testing than in the coming months, as Welsh rugby superstar and golden boy Louis Rees-Zammit announced on January 17th that he will be quitting professional rugby in search of an NFL contract.

Citing his father’s longtime love of the sport, the winger will not be joining Welsh teammates in this year’s Six Nations tournament. Instead, he will head to Florida as part of the NFL’s International Player Pathway Program.

But what does this mean for the future of inter-sport transfers? Rees-Zammit is certainly the most talented rugby player to make the switch, but he’s hardly the first. There are generally three categories of players who transfer either way from the two sports.

The first are those who never see much success after their transfer. The most famous of these are people like top 5 all-time premiership try scorer Christian Wade or the less known Christian Scotland-Williamson and Hayden Smith. All three barely made it to NFL rosters, with the former two only gracing practice squads and the latter catching a single pass for the New York Jets.

Then there are those who succeed in very specific ways in the world of American football. One brilliant (and particularly painful) example of this is legendary kicker Gary Anderson, who kicked a perfect season for the Minnesota Vikings in 1998, never missing a field goal or extra point, until his first miss struck in the NFC championship and sent the Vikes home. He began his kicking journey as a rugby player, much like Scotland legend Gavin Hastings, who took a post as kicker for the short-lived Scottish Claymores after retiring from rugby in 1996.

In the opposite direction, you find a player like Perry Baker, star of the USA Rugby Sevens program, owing to his incredible speed and downhill running ability gained through the outstanding athletic development of the United States. Given the pitch space allowed in sevens, exceptional runners will always shine.

Finally, we have consummate stars in both disciplines and the list stops after a single name: Nate Ebner. After playing incredibly in 07/08 for the US National rugby team at U19 and U20 level, he walked onto the Ohio State field to play collegiate football despite not having played the sport in high school. He was then drafted by the Patriots in 2012, however, he also was called up to represent the US national sevens team in the 2016 Olympics, having already won a Superbowl ring.

So where does Rees-Zammit fit into this limited history of inter-sport contact? Well, despite what combative TikTok comment sections might have you believe, the two sports are difficult to compare. Beyond the bumps and scrapes picked up in both, the stop-start nature of American football is diametrically opposed to the fluid dynamics of rugby. In addition, the highly specialised roles played in football are alien to the rugby player, who is expected to run, pass, and kick whenever necessary. Football players must react in seconds, and their mistakes have knock-on effects for the whole game, whilst rugby is more forgiving in the small moments, and puts greater weight on constant effort and stamina. Rees-Zammit shows flashes of brilliance on the international stage, and his off-ball work rate will translate well to route-running in the NFL, but it will be a great loss for an already struggling Welsh squad.

It remains to be seen whether Rees-Zammit will fizzle out like Christian Wade, or if his lightning pace and lateral quickness will see him landing a starting spot on an NFL roster, and there’s no way to accurately predict how his legacy will pan out. No matter what happens, we can be sure of one thing: he will spend his life dodging angry Welsh rugby fans.