The Green Bay Packers just signed my new best mate from Australia, from JS Online.com:
The Packers have signed a punter, former Australian Rules Football player Chris Bryan to a three-year contract, according to his agent/coach Nathan Chapman.
Yes, a three-year contract, though it's certainly for minimum wage with no guarantees. Apparently it's a good time to be a free agent punter:
"It's a bad market," an AFC coach said. "Hunter Smith is the guy to go after. I still think he's pretty good. I feel the same way about Masthay that I do about Kapinos. You sure want somebody else in there."
The dearth of punters led Houston on March 8 to re-sign Matt Turk, 41, for one year at $1.85 million.
How hard can it be to develop a punter? Obviously he has to be a good athlete, but a good punter doesn't exactly need coaching. It's more like they need a trainer. And you can select from the entire NCAA pool of athletes. Can't the NFL informally nudge some ex-punter/kicker into scouting year-round for punter and kicker prospects, he can spend three or four weeks training them in the spring, and then schedule a punter/kicker Pro Day sometime before the April draft? It sounds like the audition organized by Gary Zauner in March is halfway there, but they need to do something like a bigger version of what Nathan Chapman is doing in Australia to get these guys ready for the NFL. Or maybe P Matt Turk doesn't want the competition.