In the fledgling, outlaw days of professional grid iron, Paul Brown, innovative coach of the Cleveland Browns, invented the “taxi squad” to keep prospects who were not quite ready for prime time out of the hands of rivals.
With no room left on his roster, he inveigled club owner, Mickey McBride, to put these extra players on the payroll of his Yellow Cab company as drivers. They never got behind the wheel, but the clandestine salary allowed them to train with his team every day and be available when needed. Somewhere in the 1960s, the NFL formalised this arrangement and renamed those placed in reserve as the practice squad.
When the new NFL season starts tonight with the clash of the reigning Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs and the Baltimore Ravens, this is where Mayobridge’s Charlie Smyth and Swatragh’s Jude McAtamney find themselves.
Understudies, just one step away from the Broadway stage. While the Derry man honed his raw talent in college at Chowan and Rutgers before fetching up at the New York Giants, Smyth being in this position with the New Orleans Saints, barely 12 months after starting to dabble in the game, is truly quite remarkable.
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That a pair of moonlighting Gaelic footballers will earn $12,500 for every week they remain on call illustrates how close they are to making it into the biggest, gaudiest show in American sport.
On the cusp, they exist in the most curious sporting limbo. Practice squad players work out each day with the team, often fulfilling the role of that week’s opponents in training, and travel to every game but do not tog out.
They can be plucked from the shadows to play on any given Sunday and, if promoted to the 53-man match day roster three times during the 17-game regular season, must be awarded full-time contracts. Alternatively, they can also be cut adrift in midweek any time to create space if somebody perceived as better becomes available elsewhere in the league.
As products of the International Player Program (IPP), the Irish recruits are a slightly more protected species but as kickers they also belong to the league’s most transient and dispensable demographic.
In 2019, the Chicago Bears invited nine kickers to preseason training camp, each of whom came recommended and trailing promising resumes. After an open competition, they passed on each contestant and, instead, signed somebody from another team to fill the role. This buying a ticket for the lottery approach sums up the most fluid and precarious job in the sport. Easy come, even easier go.
The suspicion is that kickers are judged too quickly and too harshly, often disposed of by coaches who don’t quite understand the intricate requirements of the task and the unique challenges involved. An act that, between snap, hold and kick, takes all of 1.2 seconds is usually performed by somebody stepping on to a field cold after an hour watching on from the sidelines and the very briefest of warm-ups. A player for whom each shot at the posts carries the potential to turn him into a scapegoat and completely derail his career.
“Besides the quarterback there’s more scrutiny on the kicker than any position,” said Morten Andersen, the Dane who took up the sport at 17 and kicked for 25 seasons in the NFL, “and it takes a special human being to thrive in that environment for a long period of time, because most of the time it’s a series of potential failures ... The kicker is only one or two missed kicks away from being fired and I don’t like that. I think we should have a longer leash like an offensive lineman, who has 75, 80 plays a game to amortise his mistakes. We have a lot less, we may have eight to 10, and our mistakes are so out in front of people, so evident, and feedback is immediate.”
It is not unusual for somebody to have their contract ruthlessly voided in the hours after a bad miss. In these cases, hastily arranged auditions for a replacement are held within 48 hours and regularly include lads taking time off from day jobs to try to get back in the league.
To their credit, NFL coaches will not think twice about starting somebody in a specialist position on Sunday who was stocking supermarket shelves the previous weekend. One in four teams change kickers during most campaigns and the worst-run outfits have sometimes cycled through five different starters in that time.
Against that background there’s every chance one or both Ulster men feature in a competitive game over the coming months, especially since every member of a practice squad is eligible to be signed by a needy rival.
Their fortunes will turn upon one individual having an off day in front of the posts or suffering an unfortunate injury. With Graham Gano, the veteran Scottish-born kicker who earns $5.5 million, starting ahead of McAtamney at the Giants, Smyth might have the best shot of breaking through first.
He’s understudying Blake Grupe, a second-year pro who missed just enough crucial kicks as a rookie last season to have some Saints’ fans ultimately blaming him for their failure to make the play-offs.
Harsh? Of course. And if he pulls one or two wide left or right early in this campaign, the same supporters will be calling him a taxi. And demanding the team bring up the man from Down.
