NFL experts spotted something wrong with Louis Rees-Zammit as he's dismissed on live radio

NFL experts spotted something wrong with Louis Rees-Zammit as he's dismissed on live radio

The 24-year-old is returning to rugby after spending 18 months trying to crack the NFL

Louis Rees-Zammit has decided to call it a day with American football. (Image: (AP Photo/Kin Cheung))

An NFL reporter has dismissed Louis Rees-Zammit's brief American football career as a waste of time on live radio, even questioning whether the Welshman was ever fully committed to pursuing his American football dream.

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Rees-Zammit revealed on Thursday evening that he would be returning to rugby ahead of the new season, 18 months on from his bombshell exit from the sport. The former Gloucester wing enrolled on the NFL's International Player Pathway with the intention of making it in American football, and he later signed for the Kansas City Chiefs before joining the Jacksonville Jaguars' practice squad.

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However, it hasn't quite worked out for him and he is now returning to rugby, with the 24-year-old teasing that further "big news" would be "coming soon".

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While Rees-Zammit seemingly has no regrets about his initial decision to quit rugby and try to crack the NFL, describing it as a "great experience", he has now been criticised by talkSPORT's senior US reporter Brian Smith, who claimed his time spent playing American football was "a waste".

Smith, who previously spoke to WalesOnline about Rees-Zammit's time with the Chiefs , did not mince his words when discussing the Welshman's NFL journey as he questioned his efforts in a radio interview.

"It never made sense to me," he told talkSPORT. "I've done a lot of stories. He seems like a nice guy. It always seemed like rugby was the right fit for him. It never really made sense and honestly, it felt like a little bit more of a media stunt.

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"He wanted to talk about it, did he actually want to do it? Christian Wade was able to get it done and had a longer career. I never felt like LRZ was fully committed to this.

"For him to end this, this early... he never played, he never got in a real game. Changing positions, running back, wide receiver, all those things made it much more complicated than it need to be.

"Ultimately, he needed to be dedicated. So, to end it and quit this quickly, to me, means that he never was fully into it in the first place and obviously the NFL didn't have a spot for him," Smith continued. "The best thing to do for him is to walk away after 18 months, he didn't really do anything and he never touched the field in the NFL."

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"It was a waste overall. he spent 18 months, he could have been playing rugby and continuing to make his name on the rugby field. He didn't do anything in the NFL."

Louis Rees-Zammit is returning to rugby. (Image: David Davies/PA Wire.)

Quizzed on whether Rees-Zammit perhaps underestimated the scale of the challenge of transitioning between sports, Smith said it was "way too much of a learning curve" for the 24-year-old, as he claimed he was "much better off" calling it a day in the NFL.

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"It would have been a great story," he continued. "It would have been super cool. It seemed more like it was out of fantasy land - somebody who watched it on TV and wanted to play. I get it.

"I'm okay at playing guitar, I'm a pretty good songwriter, I think. I don't sit around and say: 'Hey, I'm going to join Oasis at Wembley Stadium. I'm going to be part of Coldplay'. That's just not how it works in the world. Kids in America at five-years-old, they start dreaming of playing in the NFL. You spend eight, 10, 12 years, and you're obsessed with it, you're doing everything you can to learn the game.

"You mentioned the playbook. I feel like he completely underestimated that. The playbooks in the NFL are THIS thick. Look at someone like Johnny Manziel, he was an incredible college quarter-back, one of the best of all time. He didn't study enough in the NFL and he was out in a couple of years, he was a total bust.

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"I think that's part of it. These guys in college, high school, university, when they are in the practice squad, the information you have to process, you have to have incredible hands, athletic talent, and an incredible mind, just to get on the field.

"It was way too much of a learning curve, and credit to him, I think LRZ realised that and he's much better off just calling it what it is and going back to rugby.

As for what should come next for Rees-Zammit, Smith offered: "I think he needs a little bit of a reset. He seems like a nice guy, I have nothing against him, he's much better looking than me, he does well in the social media world but it just seemed like it was more about talking about it than actually doing it.

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"I think we were reminded that you don't grow up in America and say you're going to make the Premier League, and you're able to make the Premier League, it doesn't happen that way. You grow up in the UK and say you're going to make the NFL, if you're going to do it, you need to spend three, four, five years trying to do it. It's just not that easy."

Smith's striking comments come as NFL writer and broadcaster Ben Isaacs told WalesOnline that, while Rees-Zammit's return to rugby did not overly surprise him, the timing of the decision did.

'Something didn't look right - he looked slow'

"There had been no good news coming out of the training camp about him," said Isaacs. "Usually there's so much unearned positivity about players that are on the bubble at this time of year, it’s like they can do no wrong.

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"But there's just been nothing really about him other than him having this potential back injury, so I did think there was a good chance that he was not going to be on the roster by the time cut downs happen at the end of pre-season.

"I had thought that he would be able to do enough to stick around on the practice squad and that he would be involved with the Jaguars this season and then probably go back to rugby at the end of the NFL season, so I was a bit surprised at the timing.

"I can only assume that he's heard enough from the coaches in Jacksonville that he had no shot of making the actual active roster," he added. "He knew that if he was going to go back to rugby, he might as well get that started in August rather than try to do it in January. So, no surprise that he's having to come home, but a little bit surprised that it was on August 1."

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Rees-Zammit left rugby in January 2024.

Asked why the move hadn't worked out for Rees-Zammit as he'd hoped, Isaacs admitted that the Welshman "didn't look like an American football player" in training and pre-season games as he struggled to show off his trademark speed and agility.

"He is someone who grew up watching the sport and understanding the sport," he said. "Which would give an advantage over most people his age trying to transition from one sport to another. Obviously, he is physically gifted. But when it came to actually seeing him play in pre-season games, he didn’t look like an American football player.

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"He didn’t look comfortable with the way that he moved, I don't know how much of that was struggling with the pads and how they can limit your movements. But the biggest thing was he just seemed to lack this explosive speed and power in short bursts that I thought he would be able to have.

"Players in the NFL who have their hands on the ball need to be able to do that. When I saw him in pre-season last year, he looked slow, and that's the last word I would have ever associated with him.

"He wasn't finding gaps, he wasn’t beating players, he just looked slow," Isaacs continued. "His footwork didn’t look right and his initial burst of speed, by NFL standards, was just way below what we would expect. When we see him running in the open field when he's playing rugby, you don't get those opportunities to run like that in the NFL.

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"I did think his speed would transition but he just didn't look strong enough and he didn't look fast enough. And if you’re not strong and fast, then you’ve got no hope of making an NFL roster."

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