Following weeks of speculation, Louis Rees-Zammit has this week decided his future - and the Welshman is staying in the NFL..
There were suggestions that the former Wales wing could potentially return to rugby after he was made a free agent last month, following the expiration of his contract with the Jacksonville Jaguars. However, he has now signed a new deal with the franchise and made it clear that abandoning his dream of playing in the NFL never crossed his mind.
The last year has certainly been an eventful one for Rees-Zammit, who stunned the rugby world by quitting the sport on the eve of the Six Nations before progressing through the NFL's International Player Pathway programme and signing for the then-reigning Super Bowl champions Kansas City Chiefs.
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After being cut by the Chiefs, he signed for the Jaguars and spent last season on their practice squad as he continued to learn the game. But, after signing a new deal, he is now fully focused on breaking into their 53-man active roster ahead of the next NFL season.
But just how likely is that to happen? Is he good enough? What made him stay at the Jaguars and is the next year really make or break for him?
To help answer these questions and more, we've enlisted the help of NFL writer and broadcaster Ben Isaacs and Jaguars writer and founder of The Touchdown Simon Carroll. Here's their verdict on Rees-Zammit's time in the US so far and, more importantly, what is still yet to come.
Were you surprised to see Louis sign a new deal with the Jaguars? Why do you think he wants to stay?
BEN: "When he was released initially at the end of the Jaguars’ season, I wasn’t totally surprised, because that often happens with practice squad players. But I also thought there would be options for him as not everything is decided straight away in January.
"We now know that he was offered a futures contract straight away, which suggests that they did want him back and had seen enough from him to think, at the very least, they wanted to have first dibs on him.
"We know Louis then went away for a few weeks to mull it over. He said it was because he’d not had a holiday in a while but my assumption is he was maybe waiting to see if a better offer would come in. Everything has been a bit of a fiasco with the Jaguars recently, pretty much everybody has been fired, with the head coach and the general manager both gone.
"With all those people on the way out, I would imagine Louis would have been waiting to see if any suitable offers came in. I’m guessing nothing did - and that’s not to say he would only go back to the Jaguars if that was the case - but I think he would have probably been happy to go somewhere else, personally
"I’m not surprised that he’s got a contract somewhere, though, as although we’re yet to see him prove that he can play in the NFL, there is still potential there. So I always felt someone was going to take him and it may as well be somewhere where he’s familiar with the surroundings and the facilities, even though there will be a completely new staff there.
SIMON: "There have been a lot of changes in the off season with the Jaguars, the coaching staff has all changed and the general manager is out too. A lot has changed in terms of talent evaluation, people who determine who makes the roster and things like that.
"So there are a lot of unknowns for Louis now, but there are a lot of unknowns in the NFL in general. Things change at such a rapid rate, so I guess being somewhere where you’re familiar with the surroundings is probably more beneficial than anything else.
"Wherever he goes, he’s almost guaranteed to be on the league minimum anyway, so money won’t factor into it. Familiarity must have been a priority for him, and the fact the Jaguars play in England every season would likely help too.
"It’s difficult for him to know what’s coming down the pipe. But the new head coach, Liam Coen, has just come over from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and was a very successful offensive coordinator there.
"Wherever he’s been, he’s delivered high powered offenses that like to attack vertically through the air and as a wide receiver, Louis can’t really ask for more than that. So that’s a real positive that he’s walking back into with the Jaguars."
What's your verdict on his first year in the NFL?
BEN: "It’s really difficult to say. When he played in pre-season for the Kansas City Chiefs last year, he didn’t look good. I was really disappointed.
"He had been disappointing in the combine, he did the 40-yard dash and he was substantially slower than people expected, certainly slower than the ‘speedsters’ of the NFL. He was also being played mostly as a running back by the Chiefs, which was clearly not well-suited to his skill set.
"Everything we saw from the Chiefs was really, really underwhelming and probably played a part in why they released him. Now, he may have been in practice looking absolutely fantastic but we won’t know that because those practices are all closed.
"It could be that last season, the Jaguars thought he looked fantastic but knew he wasn’t ready to put on the roster as he hadn’t played the sport before. It might be the case that they thought in his second season, he would be ready. That’s the glass half full thought, anyway.
"But if anybody tells you that he’s shown that he’s good enough for the NFL, unless they are one of the outgoing Jacksonville coaches, they are relying on total guesswork. Looking at what we’ve seen in the media, he hasn’t shown that he can’t do it, but he also hasn’t shown that he can do it either. The hope is that he will play in pre-season for the Jags and show that he belongs there."
SIMON: "Yeah, it’s difficult to tell really. The practice squad barely gets any publicity at all. Louis will be spending most of his time looking at other teams’ offenses and mimicking it in training so that the first team can go up against it.
"What I can say is that the previous coaching staff really did like him. They know that you can teach certain aspects of the game, but you can’t teach speed, athleticism and size, and those are the things that Louis has.
"Coverage of practice squad players is limited at best though. What I will say is that for a guy who ended up on the practice squad in week one to still be there in week 17, that’s a rarity. Practice squad players come and go often and while he was a bonus piece due to his status as an International Player Pathway player, for him to stick it out is quite impressive."
Is it now make or break for Louis this season? If he doesn't make the active roster, what then?
BEN: "I don’t know how much runway he’s got. If he is only on the practice squad for all of the 2025 season, I don’t know if at that point the Jaguars will think: ‘We’ve had him for two years, he doesn’t look like he’s going to be an NFL player, it’s time to move on’.
"I think this is his make or break season. If he just has another season on the practice squad, I’m not convinced that other teams are going to be queuing up to take him on for a year on their practice squad, and so on and so forth. It’s really crucial now.
"My gut feeling is that this is his last chance. But we’re in uncharted territory really, because we haven’t seen many players like this, who come in from a different sport at a young age. Of course, we had Christian Wade come in but he was a bit older, but Louis is someone who is young and was still getting better at rugby at the time he left. He’s switching to a skill position, one where he has a lot of the ball in his hands, and it’s not that transferable as he’s doing things in a very different way to how he did before.
"A professional sports career, even if you’re good, is maybe 15 years if you’re lucky. If he’s on the practice squad this year and he carries into the NFL next year, that’s about 20% of his sporting life. He is in his developmental prime and could be a superstar in another sport.
"Although he will still be earning a lot of money, he’s going to be earning $13,000 a week in the practice squad which over the course of an 18-week season works out at $234,000. That’s not to be sniffed at but players who are doing well in the NFL are easily clearing $5 million a year. Who’s to say he couldn’t be making more than he’ll earn on the practice squad in rugby, especially when you factor in endorsements and things like that.
"In the US, he’s very much a small fish in a big pond. When it was announced on X that he had re-signed for the Jaguars, a lot of replies were people asking ‘Who?’. It’s a big story to us here in Wales but for Americans, this guy is a nobody.
"I completely get where he’s coming from. He wants to give the NFL his best shot and I’m absolutely rooting for him. But if it doesn’t work out and at the end of the season he still hasn’t broken through, he’s got a tough emotional decision to make over whether he should come back to rugby or keep going in the NFL when it would appear that he would be hitting a brick wall.
"As I said, we don’t really know what’s going on in training. He might be really, really improving, but until he can get on the field and actually show something, that doesn’t mean anything.
SIMON: "I don’t think I’d go as far to say it's make or break, purely because we’ve seen other IPP guys come in and have slow starts. Efe Obada took three years really before he made a 53-man roster and started to effect it, and Jordan Mailata - who is now one of the best offensive linemen in the world - took a couple of seasons to get in as well.
"Liam Coen and his coaching staff will be there for a while, so if they decide in one year that they don’t fancy Louis as a long-term project, then he’ll be looking for a new home elsewhere. He will be doing everything he can to impress in training camps, that’s for sure.
"I don’t think it’s 2025 or bust for him. If he gets in again on the practice squad this year, I don’t think that that means anything going forward, I don’t think it precludes him from trying to get in the year after. He’s still learning the sport.
"It’s a hell of an uphill climb for him because his teammates have been playing the game since they were four years old. It’s a fairly complicated sport and not as intuitive as others, and he’s way behind the curve. That’s the fight he’s got on his hands.
"If he makes the practice squad again, I certainly don’t think that precludes him from having an NFL career, I think it just shows how difficult it is. I don’t know what his timeline is, but I would be surprised if it was less than three years."
Will he make it on to the Jaguars' active roster for the new season?
BEN: When it was announced this week that Louis had been signed to the Jags' ‘active roster’, a lot of people got excited. But in pre-season, the active roster means absolutely nothing, it will have nearly 100 people on it and about half of them are going to get cut.
"It is brutal, and Louis will know that having been cut at the end of the Chiefs’ training camp last summer. They get worked so hard and nobody is going to make it through on any name brand recognition. It’s certainly not a publicity stunt as some people like to believe, I think the Jaguars simply have a genuine interest in a player who they feel is very good.
"A lot of Welsh rugby fans will likely have felt quite slighted by him leaving and will be hoping that he comes back with his tail between his legs, I get that. But I’m hoping that at the end of next season, we will be talking about him as an active NFL player with a place on the roster and a proper contract.
"That’s what I hope, but it is more hope than expectation. It’s going to be really, really hard for him."
SIMON: "In terms of making the practice squad, I would give him a healthy 60 per cent chance. I would argue that the 53-man roster is difficult to crack. I mean, it’s insanely difficult.
"Assuming he makes the practice squad, I think the key to whether he’ll one day make it on to the active roster is whether he ever gets elevated. If injuries happen in the active roster and the coaches are willing to promote him to the 53, that is the biggest indicator of the faith they have in him.
"If you’re in that 53, the likelihood is you’re getting game time, maybe on special teams only, but it doesn’t matter. You are going to be on that field at some point. If you get elevated, they trust you and you’ve got a shot. But the practice squad is his route, really."
