Still, Mangini remembers vividly the low-budget nature of his introduction to the concept of Australian punters. “We were in Geelong, in the middle of nowhere, and I had one football, a VHS tape and it was raining,” he said, laughing. But when he did ultimately end up coaching Graham after becoming head coach of the Jets in 2006, Mangini recalled thinking positively about the potential for expansion in the number of punters and kickers who make the long trip from Australia.
“It just makes sense,” Mangini said in a telephone interview. “They’re born to do it because in their game, that’s how they pass. The same way you and I grew up throwing a ball, they grew up kicking it.”
Mangini, now an analyst for ESPN, added: “There’s always been a pipeline there. They just need someone to help with the transition.”
Fourteen years after Mangini’s improvised session with Graham, it appears that need is being filled. This season, one of the two punters competing for the Jets’ starting job is Chris Bryan, a 29-year-old from Melbourne who was an A.F.L. player from 2005 to 2009 before seeking out the man he calls “the absolute expert” on making the move from the Australian game to the N.F.L.
That man, Nathan Chapman, had short careers in the Australian Football League and the N.F.L. before starting ProKick Australia, a company he said was designed to help Australian athletes realize “that punting isn’t as easy as it looks on TV.”
According to the Elias Sports Bureau, Bryan is one of four Australia-born punters on an N.F.L. roster, and Chapman’s goal is to increase that number by offering the best Australian athletes a more targeted crash course in what American coaches — both college and professional — are seeking.
There are no frills to Chapman’s operation. Bryan said he would often work with Chapman in a local park, with plastic cones marking the desired area for his punts to land and pedestrians walking by with a quizzical glance.
Yet despite the unassuming settings, Chapman strived to simulate — as best he could — the demands a punter faces in an American tryout.
“I bought a JUGS machine, which shoots the balls out just like a snap,” Chapman said in a telephone interview. “And I make them wear the same clothes they’d wear for a training camp over there — baggy shorts, T-shirts, helmets, shoulder pads. The goal is to make them comfortable with all of it.”
Most Australian players have a background similar to that of Bryan, who began kicking when he was 4 and grew up playing Australian rules football. Having a powerful leg, however, does not guarantee success in the American game because the techniques are different; in Australia, players kick on the run and often boot “torpedoes,” or line drives that fly low, cutting through the air on a flat trajectory.
In the United States, coaches generally want high, hovering kicks that hang in the air long enough for coverage units to run downfield. As Mike Westhoff, the Jets’ special-teams coach, said: “Here, a torpedo sinks us. We need kicks that give our guys time.”
The conversion is not easy. An Australian player wishing to alter his technique must commit time and — if he wants to learn from Chapman — significant money to make it happen. A player hoping to get a college scholarship might work with Chapman and his partner, John Smith, for eight or nine months at a cost of approximately $5,000, Chapman said; a player looking to make the N.F.L. might pay closer to $10,000 and spend nearly a year in training.
Steep as that might seem, the results are beginning to show. Tom Hornsey, who grew up in Geelong, was named a freshman all-American punter at Memphis in 2010 and said in a telephone interview that Chapman is “a master at teaching technique.” Alex Kinal grew up in Adelaide and frequently flew to Melbourne to train with Chapman before earning a full scholarship last year to Wake Forest. According to Chapman, about 10 of his students are kicking at colleges in the United States.
“I wouldn’t be here without those sessions,” Kinal said. “I think for a lot of us, the idea of kicking a ball for a career and not having a banged-up body when we’re 30 sounds pretty good.”
Kinal added that he hoped to someday punt in the N.F.L., chasing the same dream that Bryan is after with the Jets. Bryan played the preseason with the Green Bay Packers in 2010 before being cut, then punted in four regular-season games with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers before being released again.
Now he is here, competing with the second-year punter T. J. Conley. Asked his thoughts on the punters, Coach Rex Ryan said, “I don’t think anybody’s distanced themselves from each other,” and Bryan nodded when that message was relayed.
He knows he has not been consistent enough, but is encouraged because Chapman is expected to arrive in the United States on Friday for a visit.
Bryan said he was looking forward to talking to his teacher, though Chapman does not hesitate to impart his wisdom via Skype. After a recent poor day of camp, Bryan explained to Chapman how his punts had stopped soaring and suddenly lacked a sharp spiral. Chapman listened, then instantly diagnosed the problem: Bryan had an improper stride.
“I was getting too quick to kick and he was right,” Bryan said. “He hadn’t even seen me do it, but that’s Nathan. He knows my kicking even better than I do.”