Say G’day to Jordan Mailata, The Former South Sydney Rabbitohs Junior Who Might Get Picked in the NFL Draft
There’s an NFL draft this week. Friday afternoon New Zealand time, hosted at the new Cowboys Stadium, where over the course of three days and seven rounds a total of 256 players will get their names read out and get their professional journeys underway.
The Cleveland Browns pick first, of course. They also pick fourth thanks to the trade down that allowed Houston to take Deshaun Watson last year (safe to say the Texans are all good with that one). In between that the two New York teams get a shot. Then the Denver Broncos, then the Indianapolis Colts, then the Tampa Bay Buccaneers… should be good fun as always.
Obviously these early stages will be all about the quarterbacks. They always are. Josh Rosen, Josh Allen and Baker Maysfield are the three standout prospects there and with several sides needing a new joker to throw them passes, it’ll be a scrappy battle as a few outsiders look to trade up and everything gets shuffled around wants and needs. Then there’s a dude like Saquon Barkley, a running back out of Penn State, who might be the most talented player in the whole draft class. Or if the defensive side is more relevant to your team then take a peek at DE Bradley Chubb, CB Denzel Ward, OLB Roquan Smith or perhaps S Minkah Fitzpatrick.
But there’s a prospect in there with a good chance of getting picked up whose story makes him a very interesting one for those of us who’ll be watching from down under. Jordan Mailata is a Sydney native of Samoan heritage who has never played a competitive down in American Football. Not your typical prospect, to be fair, but he’s got all the physical tools. He stands at 6 foot 8 (205cm) and weighs in at 346 pounds (156kgs) with a massive 35.5 inch wingspan and a 40-yard sprint of 5.12 seconds. Amongst offensive tackle prospects, those numbers alone will bring some interest.
Crazy thing is that a year ago he was playing rugby league for the South Sydney Rabbitohs. Fresh from running over buggers in the Under 20s in 2017, his agent managed to gain some steam for him with a youtube highlights package of what the lad could do and Mailata packed up for America. He’s spent most of 2018 working in Florida with gridiron coaches trying to adapt himself to the sport and, based on the yarns coming out of his open workouts, it sounds like the 21 year old’s doing alright.
Time out for a second to laugh at Americans for the usual reasons. Obviously there’s been no attempt to do any substantial research about the bloke as far as his rugby league career goes. We learned how this goes with the Jarryd Hayne thing a couple years back. Almost nowhere will you find a distinction between ‘rugby’ and ‘rugby league’ while the regular assertion that he was some kind of star despite never playing first grade is a bit silly too. Probably don’t even realise he was bumping off teenagers in that vid. Plus his prospect profile on the NFL website hold this little gem: “Was the attacker in rugby and will have to learn to play from defensive posture”. What does that even mean?
This is a very different situation from Jarryd Hayne in a few key areas. Hayne genuinely was a superstar of the NRL who walked away at the peak of his powers to pursue a career in the NFL. Mailata was only ever a prospect in the NRL, who had insane natural ability but lacked the fitness and finesse to play much more than short bursts off the bench. Which, in a way, makes him more suited to the NFL transition than Hayne was. Mailata isn’t targeting a skill position like Hayne did, he’s working on being an offensive tackle where his raw talent, his size and bounce, gives him a headstart that Hayne never had going up against bigger and stronger and, to be honest, better running backs.
Rabbitohs football manager Mark Ellison: “His potential is untapped. When he came to us at the start of 2017, he weighed around 168kg but dropped weight to play the season at 140kg. With rugby league it was the repeated efforts which sapped him but the game of NFL will be more suited to him. While he never played top level rugby league he always had a great ability and willingness to learn which no doubt will help him over there.”
Jordan Mailata has already met with at least five teams, the Los Angeles Chargers and Pittsburgh Steelers among them. Chances are he doesn’t see much, if any, NFL time in 2018 with teams seeing him more as a long-term prospect because of his rawness. But that’s all good, because last year the NFL announced its new ‘International Player Pathway Programme’ which adds an extra and specifically foreign player to the ten-man practice squad roster. They’re unable to be promoted to the active roster but can play preseason games and that year of coaching and training with NFL standard players has got to be massive. That sounds ideal for Mailata, unless he's further along than people realise.
It’s all part of the NFL trying to expand their borders and open up the game to a global audience and, more importantly, to a global audience’s money. You know what these buggers are like. The NBA and the NFL are the two dominant sports leagues in America but there’s a weird dichotomy there. Sort of like how that entire country lives in a weird dichotomy these days. To borrow an annoying political theme, the NBA is the progressive and modern one while the NFL is the old-fashioned conservative one. Hence why LeBron James and his mates can repeatedly make powerful social statements while Colin Kaepernick is blacklisted for kneeling during an anthem.
So it’s no shocker that the NFL is a much more overwhelmingly American league while the NBA has embraced foreign players for the last couple decades, to where a record 62 international players from 33 different countries made postseason rosters in 2018. All 16 playoff teams had at least one international in their ranks. The result of that is a worldwide brand and the NFL could use a bit of that cash, being the greedy capitalists that they are. Also we’re coming into an era where it’s way more feasible for athletes to do what Mailata is trying to do, with coaching, scouting and analytics at an all-time high. Every team is looking for that edge and overseas players make for an incredible untapped talent pool.
And in that way Mailata and Hayne are pretty similar. The Americans, obviously, don’t care what they did in rugby league. Both start at zero when they get to the States. Hayne’s NFL career wasn’t what it could’ve been but he definitely boosted the sport back in Aussie. It’s even possible that without him Mailata would never get this opportunity. Australian punters are littered through the NFL but not too many other positions get to the top without college experience.
Paul Lasike had college experience. He went from rugby centre to running back while at Brigham Young University and ended up getting two years in the NFL with the Chicago Bears out of it. By the way, he was cut last year and ended up back in rugby over in the US in their new Major League Rugby comp and settled in well enough that he was picked for the USA national team, scoring a try on debut against Chile in February.
He gets a mention here because he’s yet another example that these stories are becoming more and more regular. Kenya’s Daniel Adongo played nine games of rugger for Counties Manukau before moving to America and ending up playing five games in the NFL for the Indianapolis Colts across three years before being released after domestic abuse allegations emerged. He blew it badly and he won’t play NFL again… but not because of his talent as a converted rugby player.
This is already on the verge of happening in Australia, with numerous NRL players casually flirting with Doing A Hayne. Pretty soon it’ll find its way into New Zealand rugby and the establishment old boys will start kicking up a fuss, which oughta be a laugh. There are already too many rugby players in Aotearoa and more than a few extra leagies too, hence dudes leave to chase up contracts in Europe/overseas. Meanwhile there are zero NZ citizens in the NFL right now. Rhett Ellison is the closest. He spent time growing up in Christchurch and his dad is kiwi NFL pioneer Riki Ellison… but he came up through the USA high school and college system.
Seems like a very underutilised opportunity then, don’t it? Heaps of kiwi athletes out there with parallel skill sets to what’s needed in the NFL, not all of them can be All Blacks or Kiwis, and yet only a handful of New Zealanders have ever made the NFL. Jarryd Hayne was an anomaly. Paul Lasike never quite got the right situation. But if Jordan Mailata can crack it then he might just bust down the door for Australasian kids all over. And you know what? Even if he doesn’t then pretty soon somebody else will. It’s only a matter of time.
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