Arryn Siposs is sitting upright on a medicab and engaging in the ancient American art of trash talk in response to a Bronx cheer from typically understanding Giants fans in New Jersey six weeks ago.
“F— you. F— you, pieces of shit.”
Philadelphia supporters infamously took umbrage with a stand-in Santa Claus during a 1968 halftime parade, pelting the big fella with snowballs leading into Christmas.
So with some sweet four-letter nothings, Siposs, the 30-year-old punter from Hampton Park in Melbourne’s southeast, has surely endeared himself to Eagles fans for life.
“Why not… they deserved it,” Siposs laughed when asked about the exchange recently.
“They were giving me a bit of a hard time when the ball got blocked and calling out names themselves so I thought, ‘Why not? I’ll just give it back to them’.”
Siposs has declared himself fully fit for Super Bowl LVII on February 12, where Philadelphia are slight favourites against Kansas City Chiefs.
The Eagles have since activated the practice window that could see him return from the injured reserve list, having been stuck on that medicab with a high ankle sprain that was at first thought to be season-ending.
Teammate Jordan Mailata, meanwhile, is being feted in NFL circles as the greatest thing out of Oz since Chris Hemsworth opened a jar of Vegemite with his shirt off.
Leading into Monday’s conference final against San Francisco, Mailata’s direct opponent Nick Bosa was asked about the 203-centimetre, 165-kg boy from Bankstown.
“Ummm I don’t know about unique, he’s huge…” Bosa, a front-runner for the NFL’s Defensive Player of the Year, began.
Throughout Philadelphia’s 31-7 demolition of the 49ers, Bosa, a man with a league-high 18.5 quarterback sacks for the season, was “pancaked” by Mailata. Repeatedly.
“Nick Bosa quietly admits to offensive tackle that being held feels nice”, The Onion’s satirical headline read afterwards.
Renowned NFL analyst and former Dallas, Indianapolis and Philadelphia offensive lineman Brian Baldinger has been raving about Mailata’s work at left-tackle for some time.
“The guy didn’t put a helmet on until five years ago,” Baldinger said on the governing body’s Around the NFL podcast this week.
“And now he’s throwing Nick Bosa around on the field. You’re not supposed to be able to do that stuff. He has six toes, who has six toes?
“We’re talking webbed feet. He’s not even human, he’s amphibian.”
Baldinger is embellishing. But not by much. Mailata has confirmed his size 18 feet are indeed webbed, though there’s no evidence of an extra digit.
And for a man who five years ago covered his shirt in Gatorade because he didn’t know how to take his helmet off, Mailata’s progress has been freakish – the point Baldinger is getting at.
Bosa might now quietly admit that Mailata is unique.
Just as he and Siposs are marching down different roads to the Super Bowl in Arizona, the pair of Aussie Eagles (who are also joined by Adelaide-born defensive lineman Matt Leo on Philadelphia’s practice squad) took diverging routes to the NFL too.
Siposs first received a letter from ProKick Australia when he was 17 and about to be drafted by St Kilda.
Arryn Siposs launches a punt for the Philadelphia Eagles.Credit:Getty
Only after three shoulder reconstructions and a 2015 delisting did he get in touch with ProKick’s director and head punting coach Nathan Chapman.
With Chapman a regular sounding board ever since, Siposs has followed the likes of Australia’s first NFL player Colin Ridgway, Darren Bennett, Ben Graham, Sav Rocca and Chapman himself in switching from AFL to punting specialists.
His time in the traditional college system was spent at Auburn University in Alabama, before being drafted by Detroit in 2020 and linking with the Eagles a year later.
His numbers from this season suggest Siposs should return for the Super Bowl. He has averaged 45.6 yards and has 16 inside 20s this season with Chapman offering counsel from afar, speaking most recently before the conference final against San Francisco.
Siposs’ stats make for a better return than Brett Kern, the 36-year-old who has performed admirably since being signed when the Victorian went down.
“He has provided more stability this year. Obviously, it’s his second year at it, he is starting to really develop,” Chapman says.
“His hang time is fine but it’s different each kick. There are a lot of Aussie Rules drop punts being done. You won’t get as much hang on time on those … When he was back mid-year and we had a kick, it was just about hang time and all of that.”
Mailata of course, made such an impression with that footage of him steamrolling under 20s opponents as a Rabbitohs junior that Dallas Cowboys defensive line coach Aden Durde started blowing up phones right across the US, sending it dozens of times to dozens of various NFL types.
At the time Durde was leading up the NFL’s International Player Pathway (IPP) program, aimed at discovering athletes outside the traditional US high school and college feeder systems.
Mailata is the program’s biggest success story since its inception in 2017.
Chilean basketballer Sammis Reyes (tight end at Washington), Germany’s Jakob Johnson (fullback at Las Vegas) and Nigerian-born Englishman Efe Obada (defensive end at Washington) are just some of the far-flung and fantastically spun tales among its graduates.
Mailata is a rare beast, even in a country of 330 million people.
Eagles offensive lineman Jordan Mailata and 49er pass rusher Nick Bosa.Credit:Getty
But his rapid progress during first a 10-week, intensive IMG training camp, and then scouting sessions that led to him being drafted with the 233rd overall pick of the 2018 Draft, has changed the game.
“Teams are increasingly willing to take a shot on someone who hasn’t come through that college system, and who isn’t American,” Will Bryce, head of football development at the IPP, says.
“It’s a case of ‘why not?’ A guy like Jordan, you can’t overstate the work he put in. The scouts and coaches were excited and they tested him.
“At one point he was taken into the classroom where they taught him a couple of plays, then he had to stand up in front of the whiteboard and draw it up, teach it back to the coaches.
“When a guy like him can do that, people realise athletes and football players are everywhere in the world. We’ve just got to shine a light on them and give them the tools to learn the game.”
Former Gold Coast Suns prospect Patrick Murtagh during the NFL’s International Combine in London last year.Credit:AP
Already attention has turned to this year’s class, featuring former Gold Coast Sun Patrick Murtagh alongside ex-Wests Tigers junior Etuale Lui and no less than six Nigerian recruits going out as defensive linesmen.
“Nope, not as a punter,” Bryce laughs of 22-year-old Murtagh, who was delisted last September without playing in the AFL.
“He’s going for tight end. He’s six foot five, 245 pounds, with long arms, big hands and he can catch, run and jump. Everything he does in AFL, the idea is whether that can translate to our game. It’s a long road and takes a lot of work, but it’s very promising.”
Just like Philadelphia’s pair of Antipodean Eagles, no matter how they get to Super Bowl LVII.
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