Australian-born NFL-player Michael Dickson has revealed was given only a few seconds notice before his drop-kick kick-off.
The Seattle Seahawks player performed the bizarre but perfectly legal move against the Chicago Bears on Monday.
A ‘drop kick’ consists of dropping the ball and then kicking it when it bounces off the ground.
They are rare in the NFL but are common in rugby league and rugby union.
However, Dickson, 22, did not play rugby while growing up in Sydney.
Rather, he played Australian Rules and became a member of the Sydney Swans Academy.
‘I didn’t start doing drop kicks until I got to the US,’ Dickson says.
‘I never drop kicked a ball back in Australia.’
In 2015 the University of Texas recruited Dickson after he attended Australian grid iron-training organisation Prokick Australia, where he was learning how to ‘punt’.
In American football, to ‘punt’ is to drop the ball and kick it towards the opposing team before it hits the ground.
It gives the kicking team a chance to tackle the opposing player who caught the ball, and also takes the ball away from the opposing team’s goal line.
However, Dickson still knew little about grid iron.
Australian-born Michael Dickson was picked for NFL draft to play for the Seahawks this year
After he was told that a drop kick, as field goal, is worth three points, he began working on them.
In his three years at Texas he broke records for punting.
He subsequently won the Ray Guy Award for US college football’s best punter.
At the University of Texas’ ‘pro day’ – a day each American university holds at which NFL coaches and scouts visit to see college football players perform – Dickson displayed his punting and drop kicking skills.
Seahawks player Michael Dickson broke ground in the NFL with use of the drop kick (Stock photo)
‘I just told them “I can’t kick off (the traditional way) but I can drop kick”,’ Dickson says.
‘I can do onside kicks with a drop kick and kick field goals with a drop-kick’.
Seattle’s special teams co-ordinator Brian Schneider attended the pro day and was impressed.
In Monday night’s match against Chicago, Dickson was on the sideline and, with only a few seconds notice, was told to go on the field and perform his first NFL drop kick restart.
‘We plan for it each game but that one they just said, “Yeah, let’s do this”,’ Dickson said.
‘I didn’t get any warm up kicks in the net.
‘I had to go out cold which was scary.’
His drop kick went perfectly.
Seattle Seahawks player Michael Dickson has perfected the art of the drop kick (stock photo)
‘It’s pretty hard to do it with these types of balls, so I was pretty nervous going out there,’ he said.
Dickson’s skills amazed ESPN commentators calling the game last Monday.
Seahawks’ 19-season veteran Sebastian Janikowski usually does the team’s kick-offs, but Dickson’s drop kicks offer more hang time.
He can also mask their direction.
‘You can kick it so many ways out of the same approach,’ Dickson said.
Dickson does not want to supersede Janikowski’s job as field-goal kicker but he likes the idea of one day kicking a match-winning field goal.
‘That would be a cool thing to do,’ he said.
Despite Dickson’s impressive display, the Seahawks lost the game.
The final score was 24-17 in the Bears’ favour.