Carli Lloyd Invited to Kick in NFL
posted by Altwond Andrews | September 18, 2019 | In SportsAs far as soccer star Carli Lloyd is concerned, she was just on another field, doing what she does best.
It was a hot Tuesday afternoon, and Lloyd was on an NFL field when she pulled back her right leg and sent a football flying for 55 yards between the uprights of the goalposts. This stirred up all kinds of hype with a viral video.
Lloyd, a two-time World Cup winner, twice an Olympic gold medalist and twice FIFA Player of the Year, made football look as easy as futbol when Sam Koch of the Baltimore Ravens held the ball for her field goal attempt after a joint practice with the Philadelphia Eagles at the NovaCare Complex in Philadelphia.
Her kick was on the money. So much so that it got one veteran NFL observer debating about whether the time was approaching when a woman might kick for an NFL team.
“Honestly, I don’t think it will be long before we see a woman break through this NFL barrier,” Gil Brandt, the Dallas Cowboys’ vice president of player personnel from 1960 to 1988, tweeted.
Brandt wasn’t kidding. Just to reinforce his point, he offered a reminder of just how problematic kicking was in the NFL last season. Mason Crosby of the Green Bay Packers missed five kicks in one game (four field goals and one extra point).
Week 11 was a record-setting day for missed extra-point attempts. Extra points!
And perhaps no team had a more ignominious experience than the Chicago Bears, whose “double-doink” disaster occurred when Cody Parkey’s potential game-winner from 43 yards out was tipped at the line and then hit the left upright and the crossbar. The Bears lost that wild-card game 16-15 to the Eagles. The team released Parkey in the spring but paid him, as Sports Illustrated pointed out, more to stay away ($3.5 million) than to play. So far, they’ve looked at nine kickers, six rookies, and three free agents, and they appear to have settled on Eddy Pineiro.
“I’d give her [Lloyd] an honest tryout,” Brandt tweeted, “If I were, say, the Bears.”
Lloyd is one of the stars of the U.S. women’s national team, but after winning the Golden Ball at the 2015 World Cup, she was a substitute on this year’s World Cup winner. A New Jersey native and an Eagles fan, she wasn’t actually present to make a case for an NFL career as she worked with other kickers in the NFL.
But one may never know, will she eventually break the gender barrier in the NFL? We all shall wait and see.
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