‘Hot Shot’ - Daniel Whelan’s journey from Enniskerry to the NFL

LD Matthews found himself at a high school soccer game in the middle of the California desert. Despite attending ostensibly to support family, Matthews was transfixed by a wiry Irish 16-year-old. As head coach of Rancho Mirage High School’s football (of the American variety) team, he quickly went into recruiting mode.

“I remember this 6ft 5in, really scrawny skinny kid,” recalls Matthews. “He hit a soccer ball from midfield that went in the net, it was remarkable. After the game, I approached him and I said ‘Dude, you need to be kicking a football [again, American]. You have the levers, everything’. He shrugged me off, wanted nothing to do with it.”

Despite the initial reluctance, Daniel Whelan eventually took Matthews up on his offer to become the kicker for Rancho Mirage’s gridiron team.

Fast forward eight years, the Wicklow boy who didn’t strap on a football helmet until the age of 16 was this week named the starting punter for the Green Bay Packers. When he lines out in the season-opener on September 10th against the Chicago Bears, Whelan, aged 24, will be the first Irish-born player to play in the NFL since 1985.

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That the Enniskerry native now makes a living kicking footballs inordinate distances comes as no surprise to those who knew him as a child. Before he moved to Palm Springs (aged 13) due to his mother’s work, Whelan played rugby at St Gerard’s School and soccer for Greystones United.

“We nicknamed him Hot Shot because the strength with which he was kicking the ball was incredible,” remembers Rory Power, Whelan’s soccer coach at Greystones.

“Whenever we were playing games in training, all you’d hear from the other kids was ‘Don’t let him shoot!’ The fear was he was going to hit them with the ball. Dan was a year younger than the rest of the guys but physically, that was no issue. He was a very tall kid.”

Three members of that squad coached by Power went on to be professional athletes. Whelan, Power’s son Simon who plays soccer for Shamrock Rovers and Peter Sullivan, the former Connacht wing who recently signed for the Jersey Reds in the English championship.

After the encounter with Coach Matthews in California, Whelan’s mother was reluctant to let her son give up soccer for a more physical sport. Matthews promised that his only job would be to kick a ball as far as possible.

“I just told them he doesn’t have to hit anybody,” jokes Matthews. “He came out for spring football. Our field is 65-yards long and in our first session he kicked a ball over the field onto the hillside. Our other kicker quit the next week.

“I’m sure it [moving to America] was a shock, going from one culture to another. We are in a predominantly Hispanic area, a lot of Spanish-speaking in the community. Sports blend and bond everybody, you have a common goal to win the game. He was definitely a reserved guy but he started to relax when his first booming kick went out of the endzone and the crowd started chanting his name.”

Whelan’s Rancho Mirage exploits earned him a full scholarship to play at the University of California-Davis, an eight-hour drive north of his home in Palm Springs. He studied veterinary medicine, only to change to environmental design when football duties became all-consuming.

Yet in his first year, Whelan was not named the starting punter.

“Football culture, the specificity and details, all of that was very new to him,” says Dan Hawkins, head coach at UC-Davis. “You get in a highly competitive environment in a game that’s new to you, learning the level of detail, the commitment it takes, it’s tough.

“I remember one game I took him out and I said ‘I’m not taking you out because you punted bad, I’m taking you out because of your reaction to the bad punt. You need to learn to not let it rattle you so much. Keep your head up, you’re going to be fine.’”

Whelan recovered to become a legitimate pro prospect. During his penultimate year of college, Aaron Perez, Whelan’s personal coach, recalls the session when he realised he was looking at a future NFL player.

“I call it the greatest set of kicks I’ve ever seen in my life. It was five second hang-time, 60-yard punts every kick. He was training with other high-level college punters, NFL free agents, and he was shitting on all of them.”

Whelan could have turned pro a year early but decided to return to Davis for his final year of college. After graduating, he signed as an undrafted free agent with the New Orleans Saints. He was hopeful of featuring in games and competing with the Saints’ incumbent punter, only to be released before the first preseason clash. With no exposure in a match environment, no other team was willing to take a chance on an unproven player with limited game film in advance of the 2022 season.

Instead, Whelan got a job folding towels at a spa back in California until the XFL, a professional league ranked below the NFL, came calling. Whelan spent the season with the DC Defenders and was named on the All-XFL team, ostensibly their all-stars.

“That’s high-level professional football, a step up from college,” explains John Carney, a former NFL kicker and now coach who worked with Whelan during pockets of down time between the XFL and joining Green Bay.

“The NFL now sees him as a legitimate option and they’re not wondering if the game is too big for him because he came from a smaller programme in college.

“Dan had to become more consistent with his ball-striking, his mechanics,” says Carney of how Whelan improved from his setback in New Orleans.

“In college, you get praised for that big ball. But in the NFL, guys get cut because of their bad punt. We don’t need a 65-yard punt and we can’t live with a 25-yard punt. Dan got rid of these floor punts, controlled his big ball and has become an NFL-calibre punter.”

After signing with Green Bay earlier this summer, this time Whelan got his opportunity in preseason. In three games, he averaged 45.7 yards per punt with a longest kick of 67 yards. His performances convinced the Packers to cut nine-year veteran Pat O’Donnell and give Whelan the regular season job, for now at least.

The Packers signed Whelan on a one-year, $750,000 deal and have exclusive rights to offer him a contract next season. They can also cut him whenever they please if performances don’t live up to expectation. There’s a reason the NFL is nicknamed the Not For Long league.

“Dan’s got a great mental game,” says Carney of the additional pressures. “He doesn’t let a misfire bother him. I always love about certain players when they don’t know how good they are. Hopefully he doesn’t read this, but he is a very special talent.

“He just may rewrite some record books if he stays on track. We’ve seen him have some days that I don’t think any punter in the NFL could match. I’m excited to see him do that on Sundays this year for the Green Bay Packers, this could be a very exciting career for us to enjoy watching.”

Whelan now flies the flag for a sport growing in popularity in Ireland. His Wicklow accent may have been replaced with a Californian twang, but his journey from Palm Springs to Green Bay has never alienated him from the country of his birth. Both of his coaches Carney and Perez have Irish grandparents, while Perez nearly signed for Drogheda United when he tried his hand at goalkeeping after his own gridiron career.

Yet the biggest influence on Whelan, the main driver behind his success – apart from his right leg – is much closer to home.

“The biggest point of the story is his support group, his mother and his family,” says Perez. “They just have a very Irish blue collar attitude, ‘What do we need to do, how do we need to do it and let’s do it’.

“Daniel’s mother has been supportive financially, sacrificing time – it doesn’t work if the parents don’t help. She has done everything for him and has helped him with his ability to stand up to adversity.”