A Derryman will make history today as the GAA’s first transplant into the NFL, as Jude McAtamney is lined up to be the starting kicker for the New York Giants this afternoon.
It is the result of a leap of faith taken by the former Derry U-20 footballer when he followed a career in American football during the pandemic.
After a spring where Gaelic footballers grabbed much attention for following their American dream, a new glass ceiling of Irish representation in the NFL has been broken, just over a year since Enniskerry native Daniel Whelan started as punter for the Green Bay Packers, a position where he is performing excellently.
Though unlike the GAA trio of Charlie Smyth, Rory Beggan and Mark Jackson, who earned a direct route to the NFL combine this year through the International Player Pathway, McAtamney went the more arduous, traditional route into becoming NFL standard.
A lightbulb sparked inside his head one day while scrolling through twitter during the pandemic. News had come out that Kerry’s David Shanahan had committed to be a punter at Georgia Tech. It was then that McAtanmey bought some equipment on eBay and started practising on his local GAA field in Swatragh and taking videos of his kicks, some he sent to Shanahan and his coaches with ProKick Australia.
ProKick were impressed enough to give the Derryman a chance, the only issue was that travelling to another country to hone your kicking skills was difficult due to the Covid restrictions.
McAtamney and Shanahan both travelled to Serbia, and after 14 nights of quarantine in Belgrade, where they spent their time kicking balls around whatever park they could find, they were cleared to fly Stateside.
They worked together with a ProKick coach in Utah, where McAtamney impressed enough that they placed him with a division two school, the Chowan Hawks in North Carolina.
By 2022 he was at a top-level school in Rutgers, who play in the high-standard Big 10 conference. McAtamney was 12 for 18 in field goal attempts in his first season at the New Jersey-based school, with his longest attempt from 49 yards. Crucially, he converted 23 out of 24 extra-point attempts, and became a specialist in kick-offs as he developed in college.
This season, McAtamney signed with the Giants and was retained on the practice squad – the reserves in layman’s terms – in the extra spot given to teams by the International Player Pathway, where each team is encouraged to have one international player on their squad for the season. It’s the same position Smyth is in at the New Orleans Saints, only circumstances have conspired to see McAtamney become the first to get a call-up to the big leagues.
The choice of the Commanders as opponents for McAtamney’s first outing is reflective of the troubles the Giants have had at the kicker position this season. When New York travelled to Washington to play the Commanders seven weeks ago, they played the game without a kicker. Graham Gano, the first-choice place kicker, went into the game carrying an injury. The Giants had a chance to place Gano on injured reserve the day before the game and call up McAtamney, but decided to go with Gano, who pulled his hamstring on the first play of the Week 2 clash.
The Giants went on to lose 21-18 – a three-point deficit stinging as the team could not score the extra points usually added on after touchdowns, of which they scored three. Even worse, the Commanders scored all 21 of their points through field goals, a method of scoring that was not available for the Giants all afternoon and undermined their ability to take control in a game where they played like the better team.
Giants head coach Brian Daboll took a lot of heat for his handling of the kicker situation that day. So when news emerged this week that the Giants’ current No 1 kicker, Greg Joseph, was carrying an abdominal injury going into today’s match-up in East Rutherford, one imagines there was little haste in calling McAtamney up.
At 6 o’clock Irish time today, the eyes of one of the biggest and harshest NFL fanbases and media markets in America will be on a 24-year-old Gaelic footballer from Derry, who will be trusted to nail kick-offs and hit the ball over the bar for one of the most storied franchises in US sports.
This game could be a flash in the pan for McAtamney, but opportunities like this come around so rarely. You can trust that he’ll take it with both hands. It’s the culmination of years of hard work and a leap of faith taken into a new world, and who knows – maybe the luck of the Irish can be what fixes the Giants’ lack of fortune at the kicker position so far this season.