Rise and fall of Jarryd Hayne: Shock revelation on the kick that ended his NFL dream
Far from being an NFL failure, Jarryd Hayne could have enjoyed a five-year career if only he made a key positional switch, according to Australia’s inaugural NFL draftee Colin Scotts.
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Jarryd Hayne could have become a “brilliant” NFL punt returner if he had chosen to stay in America rather than controversially quit after just one season.
According to Australia’s inaugural NFL draftee Colin Scotts – a defensive tackle with the 1987 St Louis Cardinals — Hayne would only now be winding up his American football dream, after five, maybe six years in the Big Show, if he had stayed Stateside and focused on becoming a punt returner.
Scotts says, initially, the two-time Dally M medallist became too focused on succeeding as an NFL running back, where he was “never going to make it”.
ESPN analysts Paul Gutierrez and Laurie Horesh both agree Hayne could have achieved success had he stayed Stateside, with the later stating: “Jarryd definitely could’ve developed as a special teams return ace”.
While Hayne would eventually quit the NFL for a failed Olympic tilt with Fijian Rugby Sevens, and then three more NRL seasons with Gold Coast and Parramatta, Scotts has no doubt he could have played five years in the NFL.
“Jarryd could’ve stayed and been a brilliant punt returner,” Scotts insists. “And that’s exactly what I had said to him.
“As a running back, he was never going to make it. If you watched his film, Jarryd couldn’t block, couldn’t run the routes, it was just complicating things for him.
“But on special teams, he definitely could’ve made an impact.
“And being an NFL punt returner, it’s a big deal.
“That’s why I wished he had stayed on, even if it meant changing clubs.”
Asked if Australia’s initial hype around that incredible Hayne pre-season was deserved, Scotts continued: “Absolutely it was.
“I just wish he’d done more as a punt returner, a kick off returner.
“Because all the talk about him being a running back, it was BS.
“And I feel like he got lost and wasted on the big push for him to play there.
“It’s so frustrating because Jarryd really could’ve made it long-term in the NFL … he could’ve played out his football career in the US.”
ESPN analyst Horesh agrees, adding: “Jarryd definitely could’ve developed as a special teams return ace.
“But his hopes of becoming a breakout star running back were next to nil.”
NFL Nation reporter Paul Gutierrez said: “Jarryd not only looked the part, but he also played the part.
“Novelty turned into reality … and I would’ve liked to see Jarryd return, if for nothing else than to simply work on the craft.
“The Niners were a mess then, so being in a more stable franchise might have helped.”
How #Haynemania was wiped out by one kick
Jarryd Hayne’s life turned on a miskick. Or a muffed punt. Call it what you like.
Just know that what was meant to be his first ever touch in the NFL, Hayne was no chance of reaching the ball. Much less catching it.
Yet still, it burst the bubble anyway.
For how else can you describe Jarryd Lee Hayne’s life since his now infamous Monday Night Football fumble?
An unforgettable clanger which, made before millions watching the 2015 NFL season opener on ESPN — and countless more across the length and breadth of Australia — has since morphed into the greatest fall in Aussie sports history.
A chaotic descent which, through NFL sackings and failed Olympic rugby tilts, through an unhappy Gold Coast stint and worse Parramatta homecoming, now sees this fella, who once had us in the palm of his hand, facing 14 years jail after being found guilty of sexual assault.
Which is an uneasy truth.
Not only for Hayne, but also the Minnesota Vikings punter whose miskick changed everything.
These days, you can find Jeff Locke in Los Angeles, California.
Aged 31, and working a desk at Santa Monica’s Five Oceans Advisors.
Now almost two years removed from his life in the Big Show — most notably, those four freezing winters in Minnesota — Locke is quickly, and successfully, transferring into his new gig as a finance whiz.
“Although most Sundays, I’ll still have the game on TV at home,” says the fella once considered America’s greatest high school punter.
“But it’s muted, while I’m listening to music or reading a book.”
Yet still, Locke remembers that kick to Hayne. As does so much of Australia.
Indeed, say what you like now about the Hayne Plane’s eight games as a San Francisco 49er — the brevity, the controversy, even his “dream” catchphrase being rendered a GIF.
But never forget that on a warm September evening in 2015, before 70,000 fans at Levi’s Stadium, this Minto Housing Commission kid was our nation’s greatest sports story since Phar Lap. Only 32 days earlier, Hayne had stepped onto a gridiron for the first time.
His dream of making the NFL, they said, impossible.
Yet still now, here he was anyway.
Not only cheered out for the NFL season opener by a hoard of visiting Aussies who, including parents Jodie and Manoa, had jetted in from all parts of the country — many shelling out money they didn’t have to be part of a moment they couldn’t quite explain — but also leading US news bulletins, dominating ESPN pre-game, even trending on Twitter.
#Haynemania, they called it.
A chaotic swirl which, started by a 53-yard run against Houston Texans in pre-season, would also see the two-time Dally M medallist take overhead catches against Dallas Cowboys, sign with Telstra, then Under Armour, get shadowed by a documentary crew, then 60 Minutes, introduce “stiff arm” to the US sports vernacular, even release a clothing range.
Elsewhere, Hayne’s No. 38 jersey was outselling the likes of Aaron Rodgers, Russell Wilson, even JJ Watt.
Online, being offered for $1700 signed. With US marketers predicting a further $12 million windfall for a fella who, apart from being Australia’s most Googled anything of 2015, was also being tipped to endorse Qantas, Gatorade, even Outback Steakhouse.
Yet to Vikings punter Locke? Hayne was just another set of hands. Sure, he’d heard of the Vegemite Kid.
“And how,” Locke says, “he was an Australian superstar”.
But if there was specific talk of Hayne’s ability in team meetings prior to that NFL season opener, the punter doesn’t remember it.
Yet the kick which killed #Haynemania?
“Remember it clearly,” he says.
Specifically, when with the game clock showing under four minutes to play in the first quarter, and Levi’s Stadium heaving, this Vikings leftie received the ball from deep within his own end zone.
PODCAST BONUS: HOW IT ALL UNRAVELLED FOR JARRYD HAYNE
As NFL punts go, it was crazy tough.
Not that anyone cared.
No, already all eyes were on Hayne.
That Aussie underdog who, as the Duke sailed high into stadium lights, and those notorious Bay Area winds, was expected to not only make the catch, but run, baby, run. Just as he already had, time after time, throughout that greatest of NFL pre-seasons.
But instead? Well, initially, as the pigskin swirled high, Hayne moved tentatively forward before slowing, stuttering, then pausing as if under the ball.
But he wasn’t. Not even close.
Which is when, realising his error, the rookie punt returner then lurched forward again in what he later termed “emergency mode”.
But still, it wasn’t enough.
Which meant desperately, and far too late, Hayne was forced to dive low, arms outstretched … and … and … grassed.
The ball dropping through Hayne’s arms, onto a left knee, and then turf.
Just like that, the dream dead.
Which made no sense.
Hayne fumble?
It never happened.
Not only through most of his nine NRL seasons at Parramatta, but every day of a 2015 NFL pre-season where not one 49ers staffer, player, even water boy could recall Hayne dropping a catch.
Not in scrimmages. Nor drills. Nowhere.
Batting 1000, as they say, until that moment it mattered most.
Which, according to ESPN analyst Trent Dilfer in commentary, was “inexcusable” — even though the Vikings wouldn’t score off the ensuing series, or even win the game.
“But that’s the moment everything changed,” agrees Colin Scotts, Sydney’s inaugural inductee to the Big Show via the 1987 NFL Draft. “First touch, everyone watching, and Jarryd faulted big time.
“From that moment, it became a trust issue.
“Not only the trust Haynsey had in himself, but also that of the 49ers — it all went out the door.
“Suddenly it was a case of ‘oh, the rugby guy can’t handle it, he’s a risk, doesn’t belong. It was the cruellest of sliding doors moments.”
US journalist Paul Gutierrez agrees, saying of the moment he covered live for ESPN: “If your one job is fielding punts, and you can’t do it in a real game situation, that’s a killer.”
Indeed, within six weeks of that dropped catch — and another two in ensuing games — Hayne was punted from the roster.
Suddenly available to every NFL rival, and signed by none.
Then even when recalled for the season’s last two games, when the 49ers were effectively out of bodies, he would be used sparingly and, by the following May, have departed the US entirely.
None of which Locke knows the morning we track him down.
But as for the punt which changed a man’s life?
Yes, he still sees it.
“Because,” Locke says, “it was one of my worst ever”.
Huh?
Initially, we sought this old Viking out in the hope of uncovering a secret to Australia’s greatest sporting fall.
Maybe Locke noticed a weakness in Hayne? Or used some old school trickery?
Certainly there had to be something, right?
Like when the Yanks poisoned Phar Lap.
“But what I did to make Jarryd miss that night, it was in no way intentional,” Locke insists.
“The easiest way to explain it, I sliced the ball.
“Which makes it do what we call a tail drag.
“I hit that punt so bad, it landed 20 yards from where it was supposed to.”
Which even in Australian measures, is more than 18 metres.
So as for Hayne fielding it?
“Oh,” Locke says, “it would’ve been among the toughest you’d ever have to catch”.
Which goes some way to explaining the Aussie’s words later that night, when telling journalists it was those Bay Area winds that had confused him.
“I had a read,” Hayne said of the punt. “But then on the way down, it kicked again. I saw where their rushers were and … it was emergency mode.”
Yet Locke believes, rather than winds, what Hayne could have misread was his being a left-footed kicker.
Lefties, see, spiral their punts anticlockwise. Not only the opposite direction to right footers through the air, but also harder to read.
“So the wind would’ve had an effect,” Locke agrees.
“But when you hit a bad punt, the ball moves funny. And when it’s coming from a left footer it moves funny the opposite way.”
Which again, makes for an uneasy truth.
Especially when you know that if Locke kicks true, Hayne almost certainly makes the catch, fills with confidence, all of it.
And for proof of what that means, recall his run to the 2009 NRL decider.
Yet the Vegemite Kid, he fumbled.
An error from which we now know, he never recovered.
So as for how it feels to have ruined Australia’s greatest sports story?
“Ah, I don’t really know how to answer,” Locke says after a prolonged pause.
“Certainly I never root against anybody in the NFL.
“Having been there myself, I know how much work is required to make it.
“All I can tell you is what they teach us in meetings: Every possession is points. It’s why coaches really dislike you giving up possessions.”
Yet later as we continue chatting about footy, finances, even life in LA, Locke will suggest there were likely other things going on behind the scenes — and more generally with the 49ers — which also played into Hayne’s demise.
Which is true.
Indeed, you should know that within the San Francisco football department, and despite the faith of head coach Jim Tomsula, there were some who never wanted to see the Aussie suit up at all.
Wonderful story?
No, they were concerned not only by Hayne’s height when running, but also his limited football understanding, struggles with blocking, even the ridiculous number of questions being asked at press briefings.
Elsewhere, there have been suggestions too, and not for the first time, that Hayne’s introverted nature was perceived as arrogance by some.
“A rookie,” says one source with knowledge of the locker room, “who carried himself like a superstar”.
And who knows, maybe this kid raised by a single mum could’ve been that NFL hero.
But then, he fumbled.
Within six weeks, off the team.
Within eight months, gone from the NFL entirely.
From there, falling through one failed Olympic bid, then two unhappy homecomings — first, with the NRL, then his beloved Eels — while also paying a reported $100,000 to a Californian woman, known only as JV, who accused him of sexual assault in his final days as a 49er.
Then on Monday of this week, a jury found Hayne guilty on two counts of sexual assault.
With jail time, according to the judge, “inevitable”.
But Locke?
Well, after playing on with the Vikings until the end of 2016, he then moved through Indianapolis Colts, Detroit Lions, even San Francisco before opting to squeeze the last of his athletic abilities out in the 2019 Alliance of American football league, only for it to cease operation within months of his signing.
So the punter, he switched to numbers.
An obvious choice for this UCLA economics graduate who, in his playing days, not only provided monetary advice in the locker room, or helped teammates vet financial advisers, but even provided Power Point displays on best investment practice.
All up, an incredibly genuine fella who politely, and with interest, opens our conversation with: “Yeah, I remember Jarryd … how’s he doing these days?”
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