An NFL team has offered women’s soccer star Carli Lloyd the chance to become the first woman to kick in an NFL preseason game, after she drilled a 55-yard field goal at the Eagle’s training camp.
Why the NFL would put a woman in a position of being injured is anyone’s guess.
Lloyd uncorked her kick after being invited to the Philadelphia Eagles training session last week, and video of the kick went viral, Fox Sports reported.
For all you NFL teams looking for a kicker😉(via @CarliLloyd) pic.twitter.com/AJOgDeKwBT
— FOX Sports: NFL (@NFLonFOX) August 21, 2019
This week, Lloyd’s trainer, James Galanis, noted that the soccer star had been approached by several other NFL teams to play for them in a preseason game.
“The one that called today, I don’t want to say who it is, was willing to put her on the roster for their next (game). They were willing to put her on the roster,” Galanis told Fox Sports.
However, that deal may not occur. “She was told (she could) play on Thursday, the NFL game, but she is playing Thursday with the national team, so that was the conflict,” the trainer added.
Galanis also insisted that Lloyd would not just make a snap decision to join the NFL without prep time.
“Knowing Carli, I don’t think she would just hop on and do it,” Galanis said. “She would need a couple of weeks training just to get comfortable and acclimatized. But things have escalated, and it is real.”
However, Galanis said that Lloyd is seriously thinking about the flood of NFL offers.
Galanis also pointed out that kicking field goals is a matter of “mechanics.”
“Kicking field goals comes down to the right mechanics,” the trainer said. “If you are an athlete in tune with your body whether you are male or female if you have those right, there is no reason why you can’t score a field goal.”
But this is not all there is to a kicker’s job. Kickers are also expected to tackle, and are vulnerable to being tackled as opposing team members rush to block the kick. Will Lloyd be expected to do that? And if so, is the NFL opening up a woman for serious injury?
Or, if they make her a punter, instead of a field goal kicker, that leaves the same question where it concerns running the field and being expected to tackle opponents. Also, if the NFL decides that Lloyd would not be expected to tackle on a punt, then that means her team would lose a tackler on that play. Is that fair?
And if the opposing team refrains from rushing for fear of hurting Lloyd, isn’t the NFL guilty of not treating women as equally as men?
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.
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