NFL Super Bowl 2023: Arryn Siposs cashing in on US gamble
Arryn Siposs couldn’t cut it in the AFL but now earns close to $30,000 every time he touches the football dwarfing the salaries of the top Aussie rules talent
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Unwanted by St Kilda after five years and 28 AFL games, Arryn Siposs is on the cusp of becoming a million-dollar man in the NFL as a history-making Super Bowl victor.
Due a cool $210,000 bonus if his Philadelphia Eagles defeat the Kansas City Chiefs in Arizona on Monday morning, a Super Bowl ring would bump the 30-year-old Victorian’s seasonal salary above $1.4 million – more than the AFL’s No. 1 earner, Dustin Martin.
When St Kilda great Nick Riewoldt urged his former teammate to chase his sporting dreams in the US after the AFL turned him away (see below), few – among them Siposs – would have expected a Super Bowl and the riches that followed.
Cut and re-signed four times by Detroit in 2020 after joining the Lions as an undrafted free agent from Auburn University, he spent the bulk of his time in the Motor City on the practice squad.
His contracts – short as they were – never exceeded $100,000.
Still a relative unknown even among NFL fans, Siposs has earned more column inches and money than he ever garnered in the AFL since signing with the Eagles in 2021.
Nick Sirianni is happy to see Eagles punter Arryn Siposs.
— John Clark (@JClarkNBCS) February 3, 2023
He could return for the Super Bowl. pic.twitter.com/ri42RUWDWv
The Philly punter’s 2022-23 salary sits at just over $1.1 million, which would already place him in the top-five highest paid players in the AFL.
Names like Lance Franklin, Tom Lynch and Marcus Bontempelli earned less last year than Siposs has in 13 games so far this season.
Some angsty AFL fans questioned Martin’s worth to Richmond after the superstar managed just nine games due to injury and personal leave. But Siposs’s ROI makes Martin’s campaign look herculean.
Six. That’s the most punts he has had in a game this season. He averages just over three per game.
If he laces up on Monday and hits his average, Siposs will end the NFL year on 47 punts. That’s almost $30,000 per touch.
And when it comes to the NFL, the less your punter touches the ball the better. If he doesn’t step on the field on Monday, the Eagles will be ecstatic.
Slated to return from an ankle injury in time to suit-up in the Super Bowl, Siposs could join Eagles teammate Jordan Mailata as the first Aussies to play in and win the biggest prize in American sport.
Former Geelong skipper Ben Graham tried and failed to win a Super Bowl with Arizona in 2009, and Mitch Wishnowsky’s 49ers were defeated by the Chiefs in 2020.
Jesse Williams is the only Australian to hold a Super Bowl ring, though he spent the entirety of the Seattle Seahawks’ 2013 campaign on Injured Reserve and never played a snap for the team.
In 2011 Arryn Siposs entered the AFL aiming to end St Kilda’s long-running premiership drought.
More than a decade later the Saints remain without a flag since 1966, while the boy from Beaconsfield is on the cusp of making history in America.
Great advice, Roo.
THE SAINTS LEGEND INSPIRING AUSSIE SUPER BOWL STAR
– Peter Badel in Arizona
Arryn Siposs has revealed how the support of St Kilda legend Nick Riewoldt has primed the American Football convert for the biggest game of his life in the NFL Super Bowl.
Siposs, the man who once played alongside Riewoldt in the Saints forward line, is facing the ultimate nervous wait as he sweats on whether he will be picked for Philadelphia in their Super Bowl showdown with Kansas City on Monday (AEDT).
And it is the backing of several former Saints cohorts, headlined by 336-game icon ‘Rooey’, that is helping the 30-year-old hold his nerve.
Siposs and former rugby league forward, 203cm, 166kg Eagles teammate Jordan Mailata, will become just the third and fourth Australians to play in a Super Bowl if the boy from Beaconsfield is chosen as Philadelphia’s starting punter.
The odds are firming.
Sidelined by an ankle injury since December, Siposs was placed back on the Eagles’ active roster last week and training images last Friday showed the former Saint back in action taking punting snaps. Fellow punter Brett Kern did not train.
Speaking to the Herald Sun in Arizona, Siposs declared he is ready to rumble and has been steeled by his former St Kilda teammates in his quest for Super Bowl glory.
“I would like to think the coaches will tell me (if he’s playing) a few days before the game,” said Siposs, who has played 30 matches for Philadelphia since his NFL debut two years ago.
Nick Sirianni says the Eagles are “still working through†Arryn Siposs potentially returning from IR.
— Brandon Lee Gowton (@BrandonGowton) February 7, 2023
Sirianni said Siposs looked good in practice last week.
This is the Super Bowl update you craved. pic.twitter.com/Xl26VYkMIW
“I am preparing as though I am going to play.
“I would be doing myself an injustice if I didn’t think like that.
“I am definitely fit and ready to go, which is great.
“I’ve had well wishes from the Saints boys back home.
“I’ve had contact from Tommy Lee and Sam Dunell (former teammates) and Rooey (Riewoldt) has reached out, which means a lot to me.
“Rooey is a big NFL fan, too, which is nice.
“They have been very supportive. They have said what an incredible story this is and that makes me proud.
“I hope a lot of the St Kilda boys will be tuning in on Monday Australian time.”
The grandson of Hungarian immigrants, Siposs is within tantalising reach of a slice of Australian sporting history.
No Australian has featured in a Super Bowl victory. In 2013, Queenslander Jesse ‘The Monsta’ Williams won a ring with the Seattle Seahawks as a squad member, but the Indigenous defensive tackle never played a game that season due to injury.
For Siposs, it would be the championship ring to mitigate the pain of an AFL career that crashed and burned way too quickly.
Since the age of four, Siposs dreamed of an AFL flag. But after his debut in 2011, and 22 goals from 28 games for the Saints, he was delisted at the end of 2015.
A stint at Williamstown in the VFL was his perceived ticket back to the big time.
Instead, it helped deliver him to something grander _ the manic, cutthroat, high-octane world of the NFL and, now, a Super Bowl debut.
“I really am blown away,” said Siposs, who joined Philadelphia in 2021 after a one-year stint at Detroit.
“It is such an exciting time and very much something to be looking forward to. What an opportunity for me.
“The greatest thing about being an NFL player is the scale of the sport. When you come to an event like this (NFL media and fan day last Monday), how incredible is this?
“The fan base I have here is unbelievable and being part of such a special group of guys is something I will cherish forever. And that’s the same thing back home in the AFL. It’s the friendships you build and you miss that mateship later in life.
“It would mean everything to get that (Super Bowl) ring.
“It’s been such a long journey and to be able to achieve the ultimate goal would be mind-blowing.
“I didn’t get the chance to achieve it in the AFL but now this is my big chance.
“I really hope I play. I think I will.”
Siposs chuckles at his memory of the seeds that were sown for his staggering NFL odyssey.
ProKick Australia, which assists in delivering athletes Down Under to the NFL, had first identified Siposs as a potential American Football prospect way back in 2010, two years before he became an AFL Rising Star nominee.
Midway through 2017, they came knocking again.
His AFL career six feet under, ravaged by three shoulder reconstructions, Siposs rolled the dice. He remembers the initial absurdity of a sporting re-birth in the NFL.
As he walked along Melbourne’s Swan St to Gosch’s Paddock on a winter Wednesday afternoon for a kicking audition, bag over his shoulder, Sherrin replaced by Pigskin, he wondered aloud: ‘What the hell am I doing?’
Breaking !!! current Prokick Australia & ex @AFL@stkildafc player @Sippa02 Arryn Siposs has been offered a scholarship to Auburn University in the #SEC. make no mistake about the opportunity he has been given. And we ain’t done yet. pic.twitter.com/5XfUnmW5xp
— Prokick Australia (@ProkickAus) November 21, 2017
Six years later, the answer is crystal clear. So are the dividends. This year, Siposs pocketed $1.22 million. Next year, his final year on contract at the Eagles, the Philadelphia No. 8 will be paid $1.41 million, riches he could never have imagined in the AFL.
“I started thinking about the NFL more when I was at Williamstown,” Siposs said.
“I hadn’t really thought about it when I was in the AFL, I really wanted to get myself back in after being delisted.
“But during my second year at Williamstown, I thought about it then and wanted to focus on it.
“In a weird way, I wasn’t that intimidated coming here. Having played professionally in the AFL, I played before crowds of 65,000, that helped my belief.
“When I got into an NFL building, first at Detroit before I came here, I was ready to go and do my thing and that was the way I approached it.
“The hardest thing about my position is there are only 32 guys in the whole country who get the opportunity to do what I do. There is one starting punter on every team. If you don’t do it well enough, they look for the next bloke. That’s how brutal it is. That’s the reality. That’s why you have to have self-belief and grind it out. It may take you four or five years to make it, so you have to stay positive the whole time.”
Did he ever want to quit and seek the safety net of a return to Melbourne?
“No, not really,” he said.
“The person in me just doesn’t know how to quit easily. I have always been determined to make the most of this adventure and grind it out.
“The position I am in is never an easy one. That’s all part of it. If that’s your mindset (possibly failing) going in, you probably shouldn’t try to make the NFL in the first place.
“That wasn’t my mentality. I was ready to attack this head on from the moment I got here.”
When Siposs made his AFL debut in 2011, he looked to the heavens and pointed to the sky in honour of his dead Hungarian grandfather.
Should he get the green light to run onto Arizona’s $653 million, 63,000-capacity State Farm Stadium, Siposs will no doubt pay homage to his ‘Papa’ again. One more triumph, and his partner Rachael will be the beneficiary of another shimmering ring.
“If I win, I will dedicate my Super Bowl ring to my lovely wife,” Siposs said.
“She has been on this NFL journey with me the whole way.
“She has been incredible and to be able to share that moment with her would be amazing.
“It would make all the sacrifices, all the hard work, worth it.”
Originally published as NFL Super Bowl 2023: Arryn Siposs cashing in on US gamble
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