Carli Lloyd might seriously pursue career in NFL, but not until 2020
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The buzz around Carli Lloyd possibly becoming an NFL kicker has been tremendous.
In the week since the USWNT star kicked a 55-yard field goal at Philadelphia Eagles practice, she’s reportedly been contacted by NFL teams actually interested in her services. It went from something she did just for fun to a real opportunity.
But it looks like the world will have to wait a year before we see Lloyd pursue that opportunity. Lloyd’s longtime coach, James Galanis, told ESPN on Tuesday that if she wants to seriously pursue becoming an NFL kicker, it would have to wait until next season.
"If she's going to do this, she'll do it – she'll train in the offseason, she'll get herself ready so that she just doesn't do it for the sake of doing it," Galanis said to ESPN. "If she's going to do it, she's going to do it so that she can be a success."
It seems like both Lloyd and Galanis are serious about giving it a shot. In the past week, the two have had conversations about how to adjust her kicking style, and shortening her run-up to two steps, which is customary for NFL kickers.
"We'll try kicking balls with a couple of steps," Galanis told ESPN. "And if her range is still the same ... then that's an important piece we knocked over because we'll know that she can kick the ball 55 yards with two steps, the same way an NFL player could.”
Lloyd threw out the first pitch at the Philadelphia Phillies-Pittsburgh Pirates game on Tuesday night, and addressed her possible NFL future with NBC Sports Philadelphia reporter Gregg Murphy.
“I think I definitely could do it with the right practice and the right technique and get my steps down and figure all that out,” she told Murphy. “But I don’t want to go in there blindly. I want to actually attempt to do it (the right way), but I know that I definitely could do it, because anything I set my mind to do I can do it and I actually do kick balls for a living. So, yeah, it’s all about the technique, and we’ll see what happens, but I’m now entertaining the idea.”
It’s a little disappointing that we’ll have to wait a year to see Lloyd endeavor to be an NFL kicker. But she has to do what’s right for her and her career as an elite soccer player. And it seems like teams will still be interested when she finally gets down to training.
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