We’re all excited for the debut of Jarryd Hayne, the former rugby league MVP who gave up his successful Australian career to take a shot with the 49ers. In the preseason, he proved his unique skill set was good enough for the NFL.
Jarryd Hayne’s first NFL play went as poorly as possible
Jarryd Hayne’s story is one of the best of the NFL season, but his first touch didn’t go well as he made a critical mistake.
So we perked up when he came out for his first NFL play as the Vikings punted away, giving Hayne his first true NFL action in a regular season game. But then he made a big mistake:
Awww, Jarryd. Hayne failed to cleanly field the ball and cost his team a possession.
In case you’re not familiar with the rules here: if Hayne didn’t touch the football, his 49ers would’ve gotten the ball wherever it stopped rolling. If nobody touches the football, the team that’s receiving automatically gets control of the ball. But if a player on the receiving team touches the ball and doesn’t hold onto it, it’s live for either team to try to get possession. For this reason, seasoned punt returners generally try to get out of the way of kicks they aren’t 100 percent sure they can hold onto instead of going out of their way to make risky plays.
This doesn’t bode poorly for Hayne’s career. He reportedly didn’t drop any balls like this in training camp, and he still remains an exciting NFL prospect because of his obvious skills avoiding tackles in the open field. But the quirks of football -- plays like this -- still clearly require some learning.
The good news is the Vikings didn’t do anything with the ball -- they were stopped a few plays later. And his second play went a lot better -- he made a defender miss on a third-and-19, turning a loss into a decent gain.
The 49ers’ starting running back, Reggie Bush, is hurt, so Hayne should get some playing time tonight.
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