Before the beginning of the NFL regular season, the New Orleans Saints have found a new punter. It’s Lou Hedley from Australia who has won the punter job over Blake Gillikin. This further means that the Saints are looking forward to trading Gillikins now. Hedley, on the other hand, will enjoy this dream come true moment.
NFL’s reporter Dov Kleiman revealed on X that the Saints have selected undrafted Lou Hedley as their punter. The media is already referring to the 30-year-old as “the most interesting man in the NFL”. That’s mainly because the punter has an interesting backstory of his own.
The star punter’s father was reportedly a crazy fisherman, and Hedley owned a tattoo shop in Bali. Now, the beautifully inked player will earn a salary of around a massive $750,000. It is somewhere around 1.1 million Australian dollars, which is a big sum for a football player in Australia.
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The star player reportedly wanted to play Aussie Rules football and finally went to Western Australian Football. There, Hedley played for the Peel Thunder, and then he made up his mind to play in the NFL. Lou Hedley recently talked about his time working as a scaffolder during an interview.
“I pretty much lived in a harness way off the ground for seven years of my life… It was all good fun, and it allowed me to stay fit while I worked. Plus, it was great money and I didn’t have time to spend any of it,” he said.
Lou Hedley reportedly learned the rules of American football. Now that the Saints have selected him, he must be planning to astonish everyone with his game this season.
A look at the football career of Lou Hedley
Lou Hedley reportedly spent his childhood in Mandurah, in Western Australia. He began his football career playing in the Peel Football League, playing for the Mandurah Mustangs. The talented punter played his first year of college football in 2017 with the City College of San Francisco. There, Hedley had an average of 38.6 yards per punt.
In February 2019, the punter joined the Miami Hurricanes and stayed with them for four years. With them, he appeared in a total of 46 games. Lou Hedley punted 208 times for 9392 yards, with an average of 45.2 yards. During his first year itself, the talented athlete punted 64 times for 2808 yards. In 2020 and 2021, Hedley made the All-ACC second team.
Last year, the New Orleans Saints star made it to the All-ACC first team as well. He left his final year with Miami for the NFL but wasn’t drafted. Now that he has finally signed with the Saints as an undrafted free agent, the team must be expecting him to lead the team to success.