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At the beginning of 2024, 22-year-old Louis Rees-Zammit, a strong and spectacular Welsh rugby player, one of the best talents of his generation, decided to leave rugby to try to become an NFL player, the US American football championship. A completely different sport compared to rugby. He said he had nothing against rugby and that it wasn’t even a question of money (there is a lot more money in the NFL), but only that the challenge intrigued him, especially because his father had raised him to be a great fan of American football.
After a crash course in American football, two contracts, some injuries and little clarity on what his role on the pitch could be, in August 2025 Rees-Zammit decided to return to playing rugby. Since then he has been called up again to the Welsh national team, which had won only one match without him, and played with the Bristol Bears, one of the best teams in the world, with whom he signed a multi-year contract on 1 January.
At 24, Rees-Zammit is therefore once again a strong and spectacular rugby player, with a story that is anything but ordinary: his last two years also help him understand something more about both rugby and American football.
Rees-Zammit in 2024 with the Jacksonville Jaguars NFL team jersey (AP Photo/Dave Shopland)
Despite being strong and famous (at least in the United Kingdom and among those who know rugby) in 2024 Rees-Zammit had to move from the International player pathway program (IPPP). It is a four-month training course where non-American athletes – sometimes already football players, but also of sports such as rugby or Gaelic football – are prepared for American football in the NFL and possibly chosen by the teams.
Rees-Zammit came out of it as well as could be, with a three-year contract signed in March with the Kansas City Chiefs: the team that had recently won the Super Bowl (the NFL championship final), with players such as Travis Kelce, Taylor Swift’s teammate, and quarterback Patrick Mahomes. Rees-Zammit was tried out in some pre-season matches but after a few weeks he was left out of the list of 53 players chosen for the official season. In fact, despite the three-year contract he was discarded by the team.
Rees-Zammit in August 2024 with the Chiefs shirt (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)
He then moved on to the Jacksonville Jaguars, whose Super Bowl-winning coach Doug Pederson wanted to give him at least a chance. Even at the Jaguars, however, Rees-Zammit never went beyond that practice squadthe reserve team used in training. It didn’t help that some injuries and the fact that Pederson was fired after 4 wins in 17 games. Without even a game in the NFL, Rees-Zammit then returned to rugby.
Going from rugby to American football is very difficult. The two sports seem similar only to those who don’t know them: the two oval balls used in the respective sports are similar and the general principles of play are partly similar, but everything else changes. Football is a sport of great intensity alternating with dead moments, and requires great specialization: between attack and defense but also between one role and another. Rugby is a sport with many fewer breaks than football, much more tiring and in which everyone does a bit of everything.
Rees-Zammit, left, at the 2023 Rugby World Cup (Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
Rees-Zammit was – and is – a flexible and fast player, capable of reaching speeds of 40 kilometers per hour. But flexibility is of little use in American football, and his speed was nothing exceptional compared to that of the fastest football players, who in some roles are chosen primarily for that specific quality.
In the United States it has been proven how running back (the one who receives the quarterback’s passes and then starts running) and how wide receiver (the one who runs first and then receives the long passes). The problem is that in the NFL there are many other athletes who are more or less as fast as him and yet more powerfulmore physically ready for impact with opponents.
Furthermore, like anyone who comes to football without having played it before, Rees-Zammit struggled to assimilate the game plans, which in the NFL are many and very complex.
Despite being young, despite having uncommon athletic qualities and despite arriving as one of the most promising rugby players in the world, Rees-Zammit managed to partially change his physique (gaining kilos and muscle mass) but not to establish himself as a football player capable of finding a clear role and competing for a place in the NFL.
«I felt I was wasting my talent» he said in the August press conference in which he announced his return to rugby: «I gave everything but it’s really difficult if you don’t go through the American university system». However, he added that he prefers remorse to regret and that he still learned a lot just “by spending time in the locker room with celebrities like Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce.”
Before the transition from rugby to football they were there great doubts on the fact that he could do it, also because of the few and not very comforting precedents. However, there were fewer doubts that at almost 25 years of age he could return to being a top-level rugby player. But some doubts nonetheless there waslinked above all to the fact that by increasing mass he could have lost speed and agility, and that 18 months without a rugby ball could have made him lose familiarity with this other oval ball. It is no coincidence that the Bristol Bears had given him a short, trial contract, which was only recently renewed.
Instead, Rees-Zammit immediately returned to doing well, and there are even those who have hypothesized that even from a competitive point of view, American football could have made him a better rugby player in his two roles, that of three-quarter wing and fullback.
Already in August Pat Lam, Bristol coach, he had said who according to him Rees-Zammit has returned stronger and has become an even more complete player, as he is more physically ready for impacts, bumps and tackles. According to Lam, the position of Rees-Zammit’s body in certain phases of contact with opponents was peculiar, because “it seems like seeing an NFL player”. Lam had said that “all the physical qualities of Louis Rees-Zammit are still there, and have indeed been perfected in the United States”. Regarding the other qualities he added: “Muscle memory is a strange thing and it won’t take long for those to return too.”
Rees-Zammit has played eight games so far, with six tries (including one on its debut), with the Bristol Bears, who play in the Champions Cup as well as in the English championship. He will almost certainly be part of the Welsh national team also during the Six Nations, where Wales-Italy will be one of the matches on the final day.
