NFL 2025: Jordan Petaia's Ambitious Bid and Position Insights

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In 2018, he became the Reds’ youngest ever Super Rugby debutant at 18 years and 24 days.

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The following year, he also made history as the youngest Wallaby to play at a World Cup.

Two-time World Cup winner Tim Horan even described him in 2019 as a “junior Israel Folau”, while Samu Kerevi said he was “going to be one of the greats”.

But now, after an injury-plagued start to his rugby career, two-time World Cup Wallaby Jordan Petaia is trying his hand at a different sport. In fact, different may be an understatement.

Because to most Australians who have transitioned to American football, including Philadelphia Eagles left tackle Jordan Mailata, reading an NFL playbook for the first time was like learning a foreign language.

Heck, even putting on a helmet for the first time was a challenge for Mailata when he first arrived at IMG Academy.

In some ways, Petaia isn’t like Mailata and some of the other Australian athletes to be selected for the International Pathway Program (IPP), starting with the fact that he watched the NFL at a young age.

So the fundamentals, from the absolute basics including how many quarters are in a game to the different positions on offence and defence, were already there for Petaia.

But even as someone who had “watched the game for a long time”, Petaia quickly found out on his first day at the NFL’s new Gold Coast academy that he still had a lot to learn.

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Jordan Petaia is trying out for the NFL. Picture: Liam KidstonSource: News Corp Australia

“There was a bunch of stuff I started hearing… I just had no idea what they were talking about,” he laughed.

And how about now? Well, when Petaia spoke to foxsports.com.au in early January, he was already starting to watch NFL games with the playbook “in mind”, whether it was identifying how the defence was moving pre-snap or the different types of routes and releases being run.

Which wouldn’t come as a surprise to Will Bryce, who described Petaia as a “football junkie”.

Bryce used to be the NFL International’s head of football development and was the first to spot Mailata — on video — before bringing him over to a field in Los Angeles for a workout along with a few other international prospects in late 2016.

With that, the “best story in the NFL” as NBC Philadelphia’s Rob Kuestner put it, was born.

Now Bryce works as head of NFL Academy Asia-Pacific, which is based on the Gold Coast, and identifies prospects who could also become the next international success story.

In the case of Petaia, the idea of applying for the IPP had been in the back of his head since 2018 when Mailata was drafted.

“I think obviously I was so young and just started out my rugby career. I didn’t really want to go anywhere,” he said.

“I always tracked it on the side and saw athletes going over, so I thought if I ever got the opportunity, I’d love to give it a crack.”

He used to joke about the idea of trying to make it in the NFL with his dad, who shared his love for the sport while he was growing up but passed away from a heart attack in 2020.

Petaia started watching “bits and pieces” of the NFL as a kid before his interest in the league really piqued in high school and not for the reasons you would typically expect.

“Just being an athlete in school, I was sort of just always fascinated about other codes and other athletes,” Petaia explained.

“I had an injury when I was little and it wasn’t that bad looking back at it… so I just started looking at athletes coming back from injuries and then found myself across a couple in the NFL.

“Obviously they’d done way more major things than what I had done, so I just started following it from there.”

Specifically, Petaia paid close attention to Chiefs running back Jamaal Charles, who tore his left ACL just two games into the 2011 season and then suffered another torn ACL in 2015.

It was around 2014 when Petaia started watching a lot of Charles’ highlights and then grew to love watching him play.

Naturally, he then became a Kansas City Chiefs fan, although he doesn’t put it out into the world these days.

“Because it’s almost like you’re (an) automatic bandwagon,” he said, with the Chiefs looking to become the first team in NFL history to win three-straight Super Bowls.

Although if Petaia needed to prove his fandom, his first Chiefs jersey was safety Eric Berry, whose eight-year career preceded Kansas City’s five AFC championships and the Patrick Mahomes era.

Of course, in his early teenage years, while Petaia may have been an NFL fan, the idea of playing in the league was hardly on his radar. In fact, it was only in the last few years that he started to seriously consider a potential code switch.

NFL 2025: Jordan Petaia's Ambitious Bid and Position Insights

“Obviously it was something I really wanted to do,” Petaia said, explaining that his manager had stayed in touch with IPP representatives during 2023.

“I still had another year on my contract. But I think last year I sort of had it in my head that if I had the opportunity to do the program, I’d happily do that and try to have a crack and make the jump across.”

Not that it was an easy decision. The Reds were obviously desperate to keep him, while there was also reportedly an offer from the Dragons on the table to make the switch to the NRL.

Then there was the fact he would be missing a Lions tour this year and giving up the chance to represent Australia in a home World Cup in 2027.

He had also been playing for the Reds since he left school, admitting it was “sad” to say goodbye to his teammates and coaches, some of whom had become “lifelong friends”.

But Petaia said that it was “even more special” to see how happy his teammates were that he was chasing his new dream.

“I mean, I’m always going to be around and nothing’s guaranteed obviously,” Petaia added, and while he was referring to the fact that he may not end up making it to the NFL, the opportunity itself wasn’t guaranteed to always be there either.

“I’d definitely regret it if I didn’t have a crack,” he said.

Pat Long, who is the NFL’s Director of International Football Development, works across the IPP with its team of scouts and talent evaluators to narrow down their database of 10,000 athletes around the world and select the elite ones that the program puts before NFL teams.

In the case of Petaia, he was on the IPP’s radar early on and after “odd hour” Zoom calls back and forth with both Petaia and his agent, Long said they felt “very, very strongly” about the fact he had already been a professional athlete, even if it was in a different sport.

“He knows how this game goes, sports in general, that is,” Long told foxsports.com.au.

“Eventually it will be American football, knowing how this game goes. The lights won’t be too bright. He’s been around the block.

“He’s got a tremendous amount of experience in his own sport at the highest level. That’s another massive attribute in his favour. There is that existing professionalism.

“This is what we saw last year with Louis Rees-Zammit coming onto the program. I can’t say enough about how much that experience matters, not that it’s an automatic qualifier or disqualifier if you don’t have it. I think it’s huge for us that he comes in with that.”

Bryce, meanwhile, said that you can just “tell” that Petaia is a professional athlete.

“He’s got a great routine,” added Bryce.

“All those things carry over obviously right? His preparation, his routine, his body management. All of that is going to help him (from) day one.”

But unlike Mailata, where Bryce and another colleague, now Seattle Seahawks defensive co-ordinator Aden Durde, could originally only go off what they could see on the highlights package sent to their phone, Bryce’s new role allows him to have boots on the ground.

For the next two months, Petaia will be based at the IMG Academy in Florida as part of an American football training program that will prepare the 2025 class of IPP athletes for their Pro Day in March, where they will have an opportunity to showcase their skills in front of NFL scouts.

But before Petaia flew to Florida, he had been getting up four days a week at around 4.30am to make his way to the Gold Coast academy for a 6.30am start at training.

Most days would start in the meeting room and then transition to the field before they were then watching film and preparing for the next day.

“We’re just trying to throw everything that we can at him and just see what sticks and where we need to work with them a little bit more so they can put their best foot forward and have a great 10-week training camp out in the U.S. to prepare for that workout in front of NFL clubs,” Bryce said.

It is a unique advantage for Petaia and other Australian IPP prospects like Laitia Moceidreke. A “head start” as Bryce put it, given there wasn’t an academy in Australia like the one on the Gold Coast before last year, allowing NFL hopefuls like Petaia the chance to get valuable extra hours of practical and theoretical work in before boarding the flight to Florida.

“I wouldn’t say it’s been easy at all,” Petaia said of his experiences at the academy, where he has been forced to quickly adapt to the key differences between American football and rugby union such as the stop-start nature of the game and the way defensive players are aligned.

“It’s definitely been an adjustment, the way they have markers, it’s very different to rugby.”

Petaia was even given a section of an NFL team’s playbook from the 2023-24 season, which he studied every night.

“That was thick,” he laughed.

“It was pretty cool going through the language and learning all the different little abbreviations and acronyms they’ve got and just the different type of language they speak, that was pretty cool to learn.”

Of course, trying to understand the never-ending word game that quarterbacks, offensive play callers and defensive masterminds play is one challenge. Putting it into practice is another thing entirely.

But in the case of Petaia, the first time Bryce saw the former Wallabies and Reds player move in person one thing stood out or, maybe more specifically, one sound.

“You don’t need a ton of experience to see him run to see how explosive he is and how fast he is,” Bryce said.

“But it’s when he changes direction and the power that he generates and the force he applies into the ground and how quickly he gets out of his breaks, like you don’t see that all the time. “We’re used to taking the guys to Florida and training them there and you’re fortunate enough to be at NFL practices and you see guys changing direction and it sounds the same as the NFL when he changes direction.

“It sounds like an NFL player changing direction.”

The first time Bryce saw and heard that he was “excited”, especially given he already sensed that Petaia was a “great all-rounder” with the capacity to be successful “in any sport”.

But as for the NFL, where game plans and play calls can be particularly complicated, it was the 24-year-old’s ability to retain and process information that also stood out.

“I’ve been very impressed by that,” Bryce said.

“He’s pretty even-keeled. He doesn’t get too high or too low which, again, I think is probably from his rugby career.”

It is something which quickly became apparent too when talking to Petaia.

He described himself as a “day at a time” kind of guy, and so as much as it could be easy for anyone else to be overwhelmed by the endless possibilities, not knowing where this path would lead or how far this boy from Brisbane could go, Petaia isn’t looking that far ahead anyway.

“It (the magnitude of what he is doing) will definitely hit when I get on that flight,” he said.

“It’s a 10 week camp and it’s a long period over there. So I think I’m always worrying about tomorrow.

“It’s definitely going to be a wow moment, I guess, once reality hits and I’m getting on that flight to go over and try out a different code and have a crack at trying to earn an opportunity.”

The main feedback Petaia has been given when it comes to giving himself the best opportunity to make an NFL team is staying “as versatile as possible”.

That meant, at least in the initial stages at the Gold Coast academy, covering three different positions: tight end, wide receiver and running back, while also working on special teams.

“His challenge is he’s so versatile,” Bryce said.

“I think in the current day NFL, teams will hopefully want to use him in different positions on the field on offence, and so he’s not just going to have to learn what a receiver does, or a running back, or a tight end, he’s going to have to learn all of it.”

There are other nuances of playing in the NFL, from being efficient with your footwork to running routes at the top of the stem, which Bryce said will also come with time and practice.

“He can’t just power himself through something or use his speed through something, he’s actually got to know where to line up and know what an adjustment is pre-snap if you see this or you get this,” Bryce added.

But there are other parts of the game that Petaia has already picked up.

Bryce was particularly impressed with Petaia’s ability to transition from receiver to ball carrier.

“He has a real knack for, and a real talent for, lowering his body weight, getting minimal steps in the ground and then able to burst out and get vertical,” Bryce said, which is a skill that would help Petaia at wide receiver, tight end and as a pass-catching running back.

“What that does in our sport is it changes the angles of the defenders that are pursuing him to make that tackle. He’s catching the ball over the middle, checking it down in zone coverage. He’s going to be able to split, hopefully, the defenders and get some positive yardage.

“So I’ve been very impressed with that. That’s something that not a lot of the rugby boys that I’ve worked with in the past, they can do it, but it’s very new to them. He seems to have just picked it up really quickly.

“But again, it’s probably because he’s watched a lot of football and he’s seen it and then we show the examples when we’re watching film off the practice and he can see it and then he can internalise that and then produce it, which is great.”