Charlie Smyth, an Irish Gaelic football player who had never played American football but signed with the Saints this offseason, had quite a debut in the NFL.
Smyth made the game-winning 37-yard field goal with five seconds left in the Saints’ 16-14 win over the Cardinals in their preseason opener. Smyth said it is finally starting to sink in that he’s an NFL player.
“That’s when it starts to hit you, playing these big NFL teams,” Smyth told BBC Sport in Northern Ireland. “To imagine a year ago, when I’d never kicked a football before, to where I am now, there’s too many people to thank at this stage. I feel like the luckiest man alive right now. It’s unbelievable. To be out here and showcasing yourself on the stage that it is, in the world’s biggest league, it doesn’t get much better than that.”
The Saints’ other kicker, Blake Grupe, had handled the kicking throughout the game, but when it came down to a game-winning field goal attempt, Saints head coach Dennis Allen sent Smyth in to see how he would handle the pressure.
“You miss, you lose or you score and you win,” Smyth said. “For that to be my first kick, it was the stuff of dreams. You imagine those scenarios when you’re growing up, last minute of the game scoring a ’45' [a free kick in Gaelic football taken 45 meters from the goal]. If I missed that kick people would make assumptions, ‘he can’t handle the pressure’, but I just showed that I can and that’s why it felt so important.”
The first American football game of his life couldn’t have ended any better for Smyth. He’ll hope it earns him more opportunities, perhaps when the games count for real.