Eagles’ Elliott has had a variety of kicks
Multi-talented Elliott set to serve up a Super smash
PHILADELPHIA » The best overall athlete on the Eagles can walk into any area restaurant, sit down, and not be bothered. Won’t be asked for an autograph, not for a picture, not for an insight on what to expect in the Super Bowl.
That’s because the best athlete on the Eagles is 5-foot10, 168 pounds, looks younger than his 23 years and only plays a few times a game.
The best overall athlete, sport for sport, might be the placekicker.
“Sometimes, people see me and say something,” Jake Elliott was saying the other day, after practice at the NovaCare Complex. “But usually not. They just don’t recognize me.”
They will recognize the Eagles’ kicker, should he make the difference next week in Super Bowl LII and is carried off the field in Minnesota. They will try to look the other way, should a different outcome occur. “Life,” he said, “of a kicker.” That’s his life, as it has become his profession. But the lesser-spread legend of Jake Elliott is that he once beat a touring pro in tennis, had been
a capable soccer and basketball player, can skate, and once played on a baseball team that came within one victory of the World Series.
“Little League World Series,” Elliott said. “I was the leadoff hitter, the shortstop. Western Springs Little League, in Illinois. I was a pretty good hitter. But that loss was a tough one, especially since we beat the team we would lose to the day before, something like 7-2. If we had won, we would have gone to Williamsport. It was the Great Lakes region. We lost to a team from Indiana.
“It was very disappointing.”
Disappointments happen, in youth leagues, in the bigs. They especially happen for kickers, whose reputations and livelihoods can depend on anything from the holder to the wind to the situation. Elliott never wanted to be a kicker, not when he was bouncing around the tennis court at Lyons Township High in La Grange, Ill.
“Back then, I wasn’t thinking about playing in the Super Bowl,” he said. “I was thinking about playing in the U.S. Open.”
He remembers being a strong enough tennis player that, as a freshman, he would immediately roll to the top of the varsity rotation. Seems he had, and still does, some kind of natural ability to strike a ball hard.
“I don’t know, but I think I was lucky and gifted with a lot of natural ability in a lot of different sports,” he said. “I was the kid that played every sport that I could possibly play when I was growing up and kind of led the charge on a lot of the teams I played on there. It just came naturally. And luckily I was able to pick sports up quick and roll with it.”
The late Garo Yepremian, twice a Super Bowl champion placekicker, once gained comedy fame for allegedly saying, “I kicked a touchdown.” But if the profiling of kickers as anything but athletes has to change, the evidence can swirl around Elliott.
“I was a pretty good soccer player coming up,” he said. “But in summer of eighth grade, I wanted to focus more on other sports, so I gave up soccer basically for tennis. I still played basketball in high school and stuff like that, but my main focus was tennis.”
Elliott was still a freshman when, at the homecoming
football game, certain fans were plucked from the stands for a field-goalkicking contest. So there he was, converting one after another, dazzling the crowd and making the football coaches take notes.
“Right before the junior-year football season started, I was right on the tennis courts, finishing up,” he said. “They were in camp, getting ready for the football season. I was on the tennis court doing whatever I was doing. And one of the coaches came over and grabbed me because he knew I could kick well, just messing around with some of my friends.
“They came and grabbed me and asked me to come out, and I did. And things just rolled from there.”
By his senior season, Elliott’s name was leaking onto All-American scrolls. He thought recruiters would notice.
“I grew up right outside of Chicago,” he said. “I was looking around at Big Ten schools, kind of hoping for one of those to call my name but never did.”
Elliott recalls receiving one, just one, scholarship offer for football. So he accepted it, went to the University of Memphis, and was successful enough that Cincinnati would make him a fifth-round selection in
the 2017 draft. Once again, however, he went overlooked, and was shuffled to the Bengals’ practice squad. When Caleb Sturgis injured his hip in Week 1 this season at Washington, the Eagles signed Elliott as a replacement. Two weeks later, he was beating the Giants with a 61-yard field goal at the horn. An athlete. “We won state championships in baseball,” he said. “I used to play hockey with my brothers, when the ponds froze over. But I always liked tennis. Once, back in Memphis, I was training with one of my buddies, Jared Hiltzik. I was able to beat him. I still brag about it to this day because he was about to go on the pro circuit and all that. But that was my last bragging spot in my tennis days.”
As for his football days, he has a chance to win the most cherished prize of all.
“That’s what I signed up for,” Elliott said. “That’s my job, and that’s why I love doing it. You get called in those certain situations where there is a lot of pressure and that’s kind of where you’ve got to thrive.”
He plans to deliver. Even if it means he might no longer be as easily lost in a crowd.