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Charlie Smyth. Alamy Stock Photo

Charlie Smyth misses out on place on Saints' roster - but his NFL journey is far from over

The Down native has impressed the Saints and will likely land on their practice squad if he isn’t signed by a rival in the next 24 hours.

CHARLIE SMYTH HAS not made the New Orleans Saints’ 53-man roster for the upcoming NFL season but he has made a sufficient impression across the league that he won’t be booking a flight home to Ireland any time soon.

Indeed, Smyth’s most likely landing spot for the 2024 season, which kicks off in a couple of weekends’ time, remains New Orleans.

On the day on which every NFL team had to trim its first team roster to 53 players, it’s understood that former Down Gaelic football goalkeeper Smyth found himself on the chopping block: he has lost out to the Saints’ Year 2 kicker Blake Grupe in their race for the starting job. (Teams virtually never hire more than one kicker to their roster).

Grupe is an American-born, career-long kicker with a full NFL season under his belt, not to mention four years of high-level college experience and plenty of high-school football before that. That the Saints considered it a race at all — and they did — shows how highly they regarded Smyth’s raw leg power and adaptability.

As Smyth hits the waivers and crosses his fingers for a shot at a rookie season at a different ball club, the Saints will be crossing theirs that his phone doesn’t ring — because they want to bring the Mayobridge man back and continue to develop him.

The next 24 hours will determine their future relationship: when a player with under two years’ league experience doesn’t make a team’s first-team roster, they can be added to the 53-man roster of any of the other 31 franchises.

Smyth has become one of the standout talents to participate in the International Player Pathway Program during this off-season and while he’s still raw, he is considered a legitimately exciting kicking prospect around the league.

A club like the Green Bay Packers, who are in the market for a kicker having just cut Anders Carlson after a year, could sign Smyth as their starter but it would feel like a massive roll of the dice to entrust the job to a beginner based on one pre-season field goal and admittedly impressive practice footage.

It strikes as exceedingly more likely that Smyth will clear the waivers in which case the Saints, who invested so much training in him in recent months, would be free to add him to their practice squad for the 2024 season.

A practice squad is effectively a group of 16 reserve players who train with the team, any of whom could be upgraded to a club’s 53-man roster on a temporary or even indefinite basis at a later stage in the season.

The Saints, however, can add Smyth to their practice squad as a 17th man due to his coming through the International Player Pathway Program (clubs are free to do this for up to three years to facilitate the development of non-American playing talent). A player to whom this exemption applies is not eligible to be upgraded to the 53-man roster within the same year, however.

Practice squad players with less than two years of league experience earn a salary of $12,500 per week — or $225,000 over 18 weeks.

Signing Smyth to their practice squad — even as a 17th man — for at least the coming season would be a no-brainer for Saints head coach Denis Allen and co, who would have more time to refine his talent and prepare him to challenge Grupe once more in 2025.

Equally, if the Saints added Smyth to their practice squad without that IPPP exemption, he could still find himself thrust into league action this year should Grupe fail to convince his employers that he’s a reliable enough kicker at NFL level. The jury on that front was out last year and remains so.

But whether he stays put at the Saints or he’s pinched from under their noses in the next 24 hours, it’s highly likely that Charlie Smyth has plenty of road left to run in his NFL adventure.

The same will likely go for Derry’s New York Giant Jude McAtamney, who came through the same ProKick Australia system as Georgia Tech’s Kerry-native punter David Shanahan and took up American football in college before landing at Big Blue.

McAtamney, who made two field goals on his Giants debut during their pre-season defeat to the Jets on Sunday, is also expected to hit the waivers over the next 24 hours but the G-Men are interested in retaining him on their practice squad as their 17th man for 2024.

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