Louisiana UnLimited: The Distraction of Rhys Byrns
Don't blame Rhys Byrns if he was a little distracted during UL's preseason football camp.
The Collingwood Magpies are having a great season, and Byrns isn't going to miss a moment.
"My girlfriend hates it because I'm always yelling at the TV," Byrns laughed. "Here they're playing at 3 in the morning and I'm a pretty vocal fan when I'm watching. She likes Collingwood, too, but she doesn't like how loud I get when I watch them."
No matter how much success the Ragin' Cajuns' Australian-born punter has had during his four collegiate seasons – and that's been a lot – he'd much rather be in the black and white-striped jerseys the Magpies wear with honor in the Australian Football League.
Like many in the land Down Under, Byrns grew up enamored with the Aussie football game and played it with a passion throughout his youth. Then he turned 18, and like so many of his American counterparts who harbor big-time football hopes, he was tackled by reality.
"That was my dream growing up as a young kid," he said. "That's what I wanted to do, to get picked up and play professionally. But I realized I wasn't good enough to play professionally there."
Fortunately, the product of the seaside town of Rye, Australia, had a Plan B. He may not have had the athleticism to be successful in the rough-and-tumble Australian game that mixes strength and speed and is played without pads ,but his particular skill set – one honed by years of foot hitting ball – fit well into the more-specialized American version.
Byrns rode the wave of Aussies moving from "footy" (the slang term for Australian football) to excelling as punters in the American game. Last year's watch list for the Ray Guy Award, honoring college football's best punter, included 16 Australian nationals including Byrns. That award has gone to an Australian native six times in the last 10 seasons.
As far as the Cajuns, they think they have one of the best, and the numbers back that up.
"He's the best I've ever been around in all my years of doing this ," said first-year UL special teams coach Luke Paschall. "We had an Australian kid at Arkansas State (Cody Grace) who was really good in this conference. But we didn't ask Cody to do a bunch of the stuff that Rhys can do. Rhys is very athletic and he's got a bunch of different kick types. He can punt from the pocket, but he can get on the move and do a lot of things that Australian punters do, and he does them really well. He's definitely a weapon."
Byrns averaged 46.3 yards on 59 punts in UL's 14 games last season, his best average in a four-year career where he's been over 40 yards on average each season. That ranked him atop the Sun Belt Conference by a wide margin and put him 11th nationally. But that average doesn't tell the whole story.
Byrns' mastery of the end-over-end "drop punt" pinned opponents inside their own 20-yard-line 22 times last season (73 times in his four years), with the ball getting into the end zone for a touchback only three times all year. He's only had nine touchbacks in four full seasons, and last year he also forced 19 fair-catches. Opponents averaged only five yards on the few return opportunities they had, and UL's 43.1 net punting average ranked among the nation's leaders.
Cajun coach Michael Desormeaux gave him the ultimate compliment during the first week of fall camp.
"I don't know if I'd ever heard of a game-winning punt before," Desormeaux said, "until we played UAB a couple of years ago, and he actually hit a game-winning punt."
That came in 2020 in Birmingham after the Cajuns had rallied from a halftime deficit but were nursing a late-game 24-20 lead over a highly-regarded Blazers team that had won 21 straight home games. With just under 90 seconds left, UL had to punt from its own 20, and it appeared UAB would begin a potential game-winning drive from somewhere near midfield.
Instead, Byrns got off a 74-yard rocket, the longest of his career and the sixth-longest in school history, that was downed by his teammates at the UAB 6 with 1:16 left. Given that field position, UAB managed only two incompletions before a Bralen Trahan third-down interception gave the Cajuns a pivotal win. That started a seven-game win streak to close the season, including a win in the SERVPRO First Responder Bowl.
It may be coincidence, but maybe not, that UL has gone 20-1 since that memorable punt.
"Rhys is a luxury to have," Desormeaux said. "Obviously his leg talent is there, he can do all kinds of stuff with the ball and he can make it move however he wants. But Rhys understands the game, he knows protections, he understands when he's got to speed it up and he understands when he can hold it. He understands that driving a kick isn't always the best thing."
Byrns uses multiple techniques to move the ball downfield, which has contributed to the 43.54 career punting average that is by far the best in Cajun history. He had an impressive 19 punts of 50 or more yards last year (37 in his career) and has had at least one 70-yarder in each of his last three seasons, but it's the finesse kicks that make him special.
"With the drop punt, if we're close to the end zone and I'm trying to pooch it and hang it and pin them inside the 10, you can get the backspin and you can really get some good direction on it and aim it really well," he said. "With the spiral, the more open-field American style, it's a torpedo that spins for max distance and max hang time. I've been really working on that one … I want to show them at the next level that I can spiral punt because that's what they mostly do there.
"Then there's the traditional rugby kick, which a lot of people are doing, where I roll to the right a few steps and then hit the drop punt, the same punt just with more leg through it and swinging my hips through it. I can hit that either to the right where I'm running, or hook it back to the left and try to beat the returner."
Byrns also said that he's got a few more foot-to-ball weapons that might wind up on display in his final college season.
"The one objective is to get the ball down the field as far as I can with no return," he said. "The last eight months I've been working on a few kicks, more than the fans have seen for sure. I'm not quite comfortable bringing them out in a game yet, but there's a couple I want to really hit. It just adds to my tool bag."
"If you know anything about Australian football, it's kind of like basketball in America," Paschall said. "They do that from the time they're two years old, they're always passing and dribbling and doing all that with the ball with their feet. Rhys can do some amazing things, and it becomes a weapon in terms of field position, pinning people and making them go 90-plus yards. We've got some new guys in coverage this year that are thrown into the fire a little bit, and he makes it a lot easier when he's hanging it up there five seconds every time."
Byrns wants to take his talents to that "next level," a level that is becoming more and more embracing of the punting skills from below the equator. Five NFL teams had Aussie-born punters last season.
"That's always been a dream of mine," said Byrns, who may have been the most far-flung Detroit Lions fan on the planet in his youth. "I've loved the NFL since I was young. I used to wake up and watch in Australia, flipping the time zones. The Sunday 1 p.m. (Eastern) games would be on at 3 in the morning on Monday there. The Lions normally played the 1 p.m. game because they weren't playing too well, but I'd wake up every time for them. I wouldn't see many wins, but when I did it was a better Monday at school."
Byrns has had a lot of better Mondays this year, especially over the last three months. His beloved Magpies – who finished 17th in the 18-team AFL last season -- were on an 11-game winning streak until struggling in a loss to the Sydney Swans in front of 44,659 rabid Swans fans. Collingwood stands at 16-6 with one regular-season game remaining and has all but locked up a playoff berth with hopes of advancing to September's Grand Final, the "footie" version of the Super Bowl.
Byrns was doing a lot of shouting at his TV in the last half of that long win streak. Prior to falling to the Swans, the Magpies won their last six games by one-score margins – 67-62 over the Gold Coast Suns, 88-81 over North Melbourne, 91-86 over the Adelaide Crows, 80-76 over Essendon, 88-82 over Port Adelaide and 96-89 over Melbourne. Collingwood, currently in a tie for second-place in the standings, would rally after that loss to the Swans to defeat Carlton in another nail-biter, 75-74.
If that sounds familiar, remember that UL won seven games on either its final offensive or defensive possession last year on the way to a 13-1 record and the nation's longest winning streak entering 2002. And Byrns was a part of several key moments in the stretch that was unprecedented in UL football history.
"It's completely different for me now," he said. "I'm a lot more comfortable than I was even a couple of years ago. I used to get really nervous before games, especially in my freshman year, but now I feel like I've seen pretty much what college football can throw at me, and I can handle it. I'd never even seen an American football field in person before I came over here."
"The biggest difference is you have to really focus on every single punt because you only get a set amount of opportunities. With Australian football you're running around for 120 minutes and if you mess up a kick, you can run and go make up for it within the next minute. In American football, if I mis-hit my first one I might not get back out for another one for a while. I've just got the one role, and I have to do it the best I can."
Quote
Re: Football, Athletics, Louisiana UnLimited: Louisiana UnLimited: The Distraction of Rhys Byrn
