Pay close attention during Monday night’s game between the New Orleans Saints and the Green Bay Packers, and you may catch a glimpse of the NFL’s future.
Punting for Green Bay will be Daniel Whelan, who last year became the first native Irishman to play in an NFL game in nearly 40 years. Standing on the opposing sideline will be Saints practice squad kicker Charlie Smyth, who is aiming to be the next.
“It’s about time,” Whelan said. “I share the field with a lot of Australians, so it’ll be good to have some Irish blood out there.”
Across the Atlantic, there are more waiting in the wings. Ireland was an untapped source of NFL talent for decades, but the wave is coming. It just needed an opening.
That is where people like Tadhg Leader come in. The founder of Leader Kicking and coach for the NFL’s International Player Pathway (IPP) kicking and punting program is lighting a path to the American game. He is traveling to fields and pitches in his home country to identify future Whelans and Smyths.
“Growing up playing Gaelic football in Ireland, I think it’s the most untapped talent resource in the world for the sport of American football,” Leader said. “Without a doubt. The skills could not synergize more; it’s just that no one had built a bridge.”
Until now, that is. The IPP allowed kickers and punters for the first time last year, and its first class included Smyth, who landed a job with the Saints despite kicking an American football for the first time in his life in August 2023. Now more Irish kids see the American game as a viable opportunity.
Whelan and Smyth took different paths to the NFL.
Whelan moved to America as a teenager with no intent of playing football until a high school coach asked him to try out. He turned that into a college career with UC Davis and a brief summer stint with the Saints before landing in Green Bay.
That’s the traditional route, and it’s one Leader hopes many of his students will follow. NFL programs crave information — to not only see the talent on tape but also to understand how a player performs under pressure and to have the comfort that comes with a body of work. Leader has placed several Irish kids in college programs, including Boston College, Rutgers and Troy.
“We’re encouraging guys to get on the NCAA pathway and be understood in the Americans’ eyes through an arena and environment they recognize and value versus coming from absolutely left field,” Leader said.
Left field may be an American idiom, but it’s an apt description of Smyth’s path. He’s the first to be born in Ireland, identified in Ireland and trained in Ireland before coming over. That, Leader said, makes him “one of one.”
There’s an odd level of serendipity to Smyth’s story. He’s been an NFL fan for nearly a decade, and sometimes his father would disconnect the home WiFi to prevent Smyth from staying up late to watch games. Sometimes Smyth would watch and think he could do it, but the NFL never felt like a realistic dream.
He went to college, earned a degree and found work as a teacher — his subject being the Irish language. He would head to work in the morning, then when he finished he would get in the car and drive 45 minutes for Gaelic football training. His days usually started at 8 a.m. and wrapped up around 10 p.m.
Last summer, he heard about an American football workshop Leader was putting on. He decided on a whim to try it. A few weeks later, he learned he was invited to try out for the inaugural IPP class — with a chance to go to the NFL combine.
“And I was like, ‘How is this happening?’ ” Smyth said. “… I was just trying out for fun, and the fact that there was actually going to be an opportunity to lead from that was just so surprising and extreme luck and fortune to be noticed so close to when those tryouts were coming up.”
Smyth’s raw kicking talent is impressive. It’s why the Saints snapped him up in March, about seven months after he kicked an American ball for the first time. His long field goal attempts in training camp were appointment viewing. There was one memorable 62-yard attempt that probably would have cleared the crossbar from 70.
If you listen to the few who have seen him work, it’s only a matter of time before he’s kicking on Sundays.
“He’s really, really good,” Saints long snapper Zach Wood said.
For that talent to be put on display, though, Smyth has to prove he can be consistent. He has spent the entire season on the Saints practice squad, working behind the scenes on a craft that was literally foreign to him two years ago.
“Sometimes he gets upset, and I’m like, ‘You’re in a great position right now, you get to work on yourself for a year,” Wood said. “Watch how (Saints kicker Blake Grupe) does his thing, find a routine. This is a great learning year for you.’ Not a lot of people get the chance to do that.”
Smyth is talented and ambitious. The dream may have not felt realistic at one point, but it very much is now. While he is grateful for this opportunity, he knows he belongs, and he is eager to represent his home country on one of the biggest stages in sports.
And there are many who are following closely back home. Leader said Ireland’s early successes in the IPP and placing kickers and punters in colleges have been a catalyst for the game’s growth in the Emerald Isle.
“What that’s kind of done is made it mainstream,” Leader said. “The national papers are covering the athletes’ story, there’s a documentary being shot with the national broadcaster, the main radio shows are talking about it, people in their work environments are chatting about it.
“… That was never the chatter literally a year ago. It used to be an underground sport, and it’s now brought the sport to the front of people’s consciousness.”
Leader is in his early 30s now. He grew up playing rugby around Europe, but a shoulder surgery forced him to pause his career. He came to the United States to study and discovered the game. He tried it out, attending a training session in San Diego with former Saints kicker John Carney. Leader came away from the experience feeling there was little difference between him and some of the more experienced NFL hopefuls he trained with.
An idea occurred to him. He’d wished he’d discovered the game in his late teens, but there was no road to the American game from Ireland. The kids back home play rugby like Leader did, or for their county Gaelic football team like Smyth did.
“It’s about having a structure and a pathway to follow,” Leader said. “That’s one of the biggest things that have changed on the ground. There’s loads of guys that have interest in kicking but don’t know how to go about it, and I was one of those.”
The vision was to establish an American football presence in Ireland, giving kids there an opportunity to learn the game and train on their home soil. It is still early in the process, but Leader, Smyth and Whelan are all confident that more talent is on the way.
“It’ll be great to have a dozen, half-dozen Irish kids in the NFL within the next five years,” Smyth said.
At some point in the coming days, Leader said the IPP will designate its next group of candidates. He expects a few Irish lads to be in that number.