Michael Wilson #14 of the Arizona Cardinals comes from a family rich in NZ sporting history. Photo: AFP / Ronald Martinez
By Liam Swiggs
With Super Bowl Mondays becoming an end-of-summer ritual and the idea of yet another NRL player considering a career switch floated in the media every season, American football is gaining serious ground in Aotearoa and across the ditch.
The prospect of seeing our homegrown talent in one of the most-watched sporting competitions in the world is more than exciting - but what if our next local athlete wasn't so homegrown?
The NFL has just welcomed Michael Wilson, a Californian with Kiwi roots.
He's not a former rugby player and he wasn't born in Aotearoa, but the prospective first-year NFL rookie comes from a family rich in New Zealand sporting history.
Wilson was born in the sunshine state to Wellingtonian parents Orville and Ngaire Wilson.
His mother Ngaire is the sister of legendary Kiwi soccer player Maureen Jacobson who, in addition to donning the black and white Football Ferns stripes on over 60 occasions, was also one of the first female New Zealanders to play professional football abroad - most famously winning the FA Cup final with the Millwall Lionesses in 1991.
Wilson is currently wide receiver for the Arizona Cardinals.
And he may not be as large as the typical wide receiver, but he more than makes up for it with express pace and the ability to beat defenders on his impressive route running.
His journey to the NFL involved a relatively solid NCAA college football career for the Stanford Cardinals in the infamous Pac-12 conference.
Despite being plagued with a fractured collarbone and reoccurring foot injuries, he finished his collegiate career with 36 games over five years, racking up 134 career receptions for 1662 yards and 11 touchdowns.
When it came to the NFL Draft, he was selected as a third round pick, far higher than initially predicted with the amount of talent turning pro from Wilson's fellow college class of 2022.
Over here in Aotearoa we might call that "taking a punt" - a fair bit of risk was involved with the decision considering Wilson's past injuries - with the reward factor being centred around his ability to play ball - and play ball hard - something a struggling Arizona Cardinals outfit very much needed as it languished down the bottom of its conference the past few seasons.
Wilson has so far proven to be a valuable addition to the wide receiver group.
Michael Wilson #14 of the Arizona Cardinals dives forward against the Atlanta Falcons during the third quarter at State Farm Stadium earlier this month. Photo: AFP / Mike Christy
Since he arrived in the summer, coaches and teammates have been more than pleased by his unique ability to win running routes.
Wilson has 28 receptions for 435 yards and two touchdowns so far in his rookie seasons. With each catch, he is averaging 15.5 yards.
Wilson needs just one more multi-touchdown performance to become only the third rookie in Cardinals team history to have multiple games with two touchdown receptions. Along with the legendary Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin, it seems like Arizona might just be bang on the money.
When asked about the Cardinal's rookie sensation - Quarterback Kyler Murray stated in a recent interview with ESPN, "I love Michael. He is a great kid, but he's a great player. I think he does everything right. Anything you ask, he'll do. Almost to the point of like - I'm just joking around sometimes and I may ask him (to do something) and he's like, 'Yeah, K1. I'll do it.' He's bought in, man. He's a great teammate too, so I'm looking forward to getting him the rock."
Wilson's debut season makes him the seventh athlete of New Zealand heritage to grace the fields of the NFL - with five of the six before him having been born in Aotearoa, the most notable being Ōtautahi-born Riki Ellison of Ngāi Tahu, a fear-inducing linebacker who's won three Super Bowls with the San Francisco 49ers.
More recently, we've seen a trend of rugby league players giving the game of "American Code" a go. We see players like Sonny Bill Williams going back and forth seamlessly from union to league.
Then there's Jordan Mailata, the most successful player to transition from league/union to the NFL.
Scouts were interested in him even though, during a stay at the U20 South Sydney Rabbitohs, he struggled to advance to the top grade of rugby league due to his large size and lack of pace.
After signing up for the International Player Pathway Programme, Mailata was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles.
After multiple years on the sidelines learning the intricacies of a game far more complicated than Union or League, he quickly rose to prominence as one of the NFL's most feared offensive linemen, playing a more than significant role in the Eagles' dominant run the last 15 months, topped off with an appearance in last year's Super Bowl defeat, which ended in a 35-38 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs.
Surely someone from our rich talent pool would show those yanks how it's really done - but mastering the intricacies of the NFL and gaining the trust of coaches with tenuous job security is an immense challenge.
Unfortunately, the NFL isn't aggressively searching for foreign talent despite success stories like Mailata's, preferring to concentrate on business expansion over athlete development this side of the world.
But with Michael Wilson's sporting heritage to draw on and a red hot opportunity over in Arizona to lock his spot in with a prestigious NFL organisation as a starting wide receiver, we could be on the cusp of another exciting era of Kiwi athletes in the NFL.
