Carli Lloyd ‘seriously considering’ NFL offer to kick field goals
"It’s a challenge. ... I would probably enjoy it," the U.S. women's soccer team star from Delran told Fox Sports.
After her 55-yard field goal at a recent Eagles-Ravens joint practice went viral, U.S. women’s soccer team star Carli Lloyd told Fox Sports that she is “seriously considering” an offer that her trainer James Galanis said Lloyd received from an anonymous NFL team.
It’s a challenge," the Delran native told Fox. "I would probably enjoy it.”
Galanis started the hype train by telling Fox earlier that at least three NFL teams had approached Lloyd, 37, to come to their training camps. One of them offered her a place on the team for a preseason game Thursday night, but Lloyd turned it down because the U.S. women are playing at Lincoln Financial Field at the same hour.
The friendly against Portugal (7 p.m., Fox Sports 1) has sold more than 45,000 tickets, setting a record for the biggest attendance for a stand-alone U.S. team friendly.
Lloyd also threw out the first pitch Tuesday at Citizens Bank Park when the Phillies played the Pittsburgh Pirates. Before the game, she was interviewed on the Phillies’ radio broadcast.
“This started out casually and I kind of was laughing about it,” Lloyd said. “But the more and more I’ve kind of spoken to my husband and my support group back home, people are really encouraging me to kind of go for this.”
That includes her national team colleagues, who according to Lloyd are “all like, go do it.”
As a practical matter, Lloyd believes the adjustment from kicking soccer balls to footballs isn’t too big.
“Obviously, I’m not trying to go be a quarterback. I kick a ball for a living. It’s pretty similar,” she said. “I’ve broken down my technique through soccer for over 15 years, and it would be no different than kicking a football — except obviously, I would have to change the steps and [put on] pads and a helmet, and [face] 300 pound guys on the line. So there’s a few things. But I’m seriously considering it.”
Lloyd added, though, that she isn’t quite ready to jump into the fray yet.
“I want to practice it,” she said. “I don’t want to just jump into something. If I’m going to do it, I want to actually go for it.”
Asked by Phillies radio announcer Jim Jackson if that means she’d more likely try to get into a NFL training camp next year than this year, Lloyd answered: “I’m going to focus on these two games we have against Portugal [Thursday and next Tuesday in St. Paul, Minn.] and then sit down and just think about it.”
She also has commitments to her club team, the NWSL’s Sky Blue FC.
The U.S. team’s four World Cups and four Olympic titles have done a lot to put the lack of gender equality in professional sports in the spotlight. That spotlight would become brighter if Lloyd breaks into America’s biggest — and arguably most male-dominated — sport of all.
“We are thinking about what it would do to the sport itself, every sport at every level,” Galanis told Fox. “Knowing Carli, this is why it is enticing for her. … It is the next thing she can conquer. That’s why we have had half a dozen conversations about it in less than a week.”
Galanis’ refusal to name any of the NFL teams in question raised skeptics’ eyebrows. But Lloyd’s remarks raise the stakes.
“Obviously, I know there’s some challenging and different things, and people talk and whatnot, but I really do believe in myself and know deep down that I could do it,” she said on the radio. “It’s not like I’m trying to go out there and throw a 95 mile-an-hour fastball. That won’t happen. But to kick a field goal, I could do it.”