Meet the Scot ready to take the NFL by storm
Inverness-born Gillan is eager to prove that Cleveland were right to take a punt on him in the NFL
THEY love a nickname in the National Football League. Deion Sanders is simply known as ‘Prime Time’. Calvin Johnson went by the fearsome ‘Megatron’ moniker. Barrelling running back Marshawn Lynch is ‘Beast Mode’. Those in the UK whose American football interest was piqued in the mid-Eighties fondly remember William ‘The Refrigerator’ Perry from the legendary 1985 Chicago Bears. So it is greatness that normally helps you gain one.
Jamie Gillan, a 22-year-old ex-Scottish Schools Cup-winning rugby player from Inverness, hasn’t taken a snap or kicked a football in the league. He only found out eight days ago that he had made the cut for the 53-man Cleveland Browns roster.
Yet he enjoys cult-hero status. The hair. The accent. The jarring, rugby-style tackling. The booming punts in pre-season that hint at exceptional talent. The ridiculous back story.
And, of course, the nickname bequeathed as long ago as high school that fans think is beyond cool and is about to become established NFL vocabulary as a new campaign kicks off.
Call it a clamour for ‘The Scottish Hammer’. T-shirts celebrating his name — ‘a must-have design for any real Cleveland football fan that knows it’s hammer time’ — are flying off the shelves.
Today at FirstEnergy Stadium, home of the infamous and fanatical ‘Dawg Pound’ section of supporters, the frenzy cranks up a notch. The Browns, serial losers, start a new season with a squad littered with star talent and harbouring genuine play-off ambitions. As they host the Tennessee Titans, the emergence of a young Scot has the makings of one of the intriguing tales.
Does he possess the talent to back up the hype? Here is the Browns’ special teams co-ordinator Mike Priefer on how Gillan ousted the safe bet of veteran Britton Colquitt to snare the starting job.
‘I think it would have been difficult to let a guy like Jamie walk out the building,’ Priefer confessed. ‘He’s so talented. Got such a big leg swing. The sky is the limit for him. I think he’s just scratching the surface of how good of a punter and holder he can be in this league.’
Six years ago, Gillan was a rugby-mad teenage schoolboy at Merchiston in Edinburgh, watching endless Youtube snippets of Jonny Wilkinson and Chris Paterson’s kicking heroics and with no interest whatsoever in the American game with the oval ball.
His dream of playing for Scotland, however, was about to be lost in the upheaval of a move across the Atlantic. RAF squadron leader dad, Colin, relocated the family — Jamie, sister Mhairi and mum Dee — to Leonardtown, Maryland, around 50 miles south of Washington DC.
‘I didn’t want to leave,’ Gillan recalls. ‘I got really good results in my GCSEs and had just won the Scottish Schools Cup for the 16s, I was doing really well at Merchiston. We had such a stellar team.
‘My goal was to play professional rugby, pull on the Scotland jersey one day. It was really difficult, a really big decision that me and my family made. But with my parents moving across the Atlantic and the fact my dad didn’t want to be that far away from us, I decided to move out here.’
Adjustment to studies in the States was difficult, life at college ‘even crazier’. For by that stage Gillan’s road to the NFL has begun, juggling further education with posting sensational punting figures for University of Arkansas at Pine-Bluff.
All because one day at Leonardtown he noticed the school team kicker making a meal of his efforts and felt he could fare better. That’s when ‘The Scottish Hammer’ name was coined by coach Brian Woodburn, who will be a proud man in the Ohio crowd today.
Gillan’s gruelling work in the college game was worth it as his skills were noted by several NFL scouts before the draft in April.
‘A lot of people don’t realise college sport is ridiculously hard in terms of your timetable and the amount of sleep,’ he explained.
‘Up at 5am running until you’re throwing up. We’ve got five classes, have to squeeze in some food and lifting right after that for an hour and a half. Then punting for two hours.
‘Then dinner. Then study hall/team meetings before getting to bed around midnight. That’s MondayFriday during the season. It’s a hard schedule but it moulds you well if you stick to it.’
Gillan went undrafted in the seven rounds of selections as all 32 NFL teams sweep up the best talent from
‘I WANTED TO PLAY RUGBY PROFESSIONALLY BUT I MADE THE BIG DECISION TO GO ACROSS THE ATLANTIC’
college. Punters are the least glamorous position, though becoming a free agent helped Gillan take his pick from a few interested parties.
The Browns showed the most love and he spent training camp then the month of pre-season grafting for a place in their team. Drilling a monster 74-yard punt against Indianapolis Colts was a huge talking point.
That was until they saw his tackling — not a trait that regular performers at his position are renowned for. He became a viral sensation during pre-season when a spearing stop of Detroit’s Tom Kennedy was the first of several bruising hits doled out to opposition special teamers.
Gillan traces his aptitude for these skewering blows back to when he was barely halfway through primary school. Starting out at Highland Rugby Club under the tutelage of ex-Scotland Under-21s player Donnie Flockhart.
‘I’d been going to watch my dad’s rugby games since I was a baby and first started playing a little bit of tag rugby when I was five,’ he reveals. ‘I couldn’t wait to start tackling people. Then it really came together at Highland. We had a solid group. People used to hate playing against us. We used to whoop everybody’s ass for the time I was there. ‘We had a coach who played for Scotland A team for a bit. He used to bring the fire out in everyone. We’d go out after our team talk wanting to take people out the game, we really wanted to crush teams. We were eight years old.’ Now his upcoming schedule won’t grant Gillan a minute of watching action from the World Cup in Japan. For at 22 and a career crossroads last Saturday, he and his father faced D-Day with considerable cool. It was time for the Browns to determine who was being cut, traded, put on the practice squad or — the glory goal — making head coach Freddie Kitchens’ squad. The Gillans made for The Flying Monkey pub in Ohio and that’s when general manager, John Dorsey, dialled in with the sensational news. ‘Dad was more emotional and nervous than me because I knew what I’d done in the previous four months,’ stressed Gillan. ‘Regardless of what happened, I could sit back and be happy because I was just enjoying the experience. ‘So we were like, let’s go out and enjoy ourselves. So we did. Then the phone call made me extremely happy. It was a huge celebration for a lot of people and my family were really happy. For me it was cool. But it’s busy. ‘I haven’t done anything yet. I’ve just made a team and that doesn’t guarantee anything because they could still bring someone else in if they’re not happy with my production. We’ve got a long season ahead and I’ve got to do well, keep getting better and become a great punter for this team.’
In 2017, Cleveland were a joke, losing all 16 regular season fixtures. Their most recent play-off appearance was 2002. Last year, the emergence of brash rookie quarterback Baker Mayfield was one of the key sparks to a much-improved squad posting a record of seven wins and one tie.
The blockbuster early off-season trade of Odell Beckham Jnr from New York Giants sees Gillan sharing a locker room with one of the biggest names from the American sporting spectrum.
Mayfield has the character, arm strength and accuracy to be one of the top performing quarterbacks in the league, helped by a support cast including ace wide receiver and Beckham Jnr’s partner in crime Jarvis Landry.
All of whom were invited to make a morsel of sense out of Billy Connolly’s hilarious The Evil
Scotsman when Gillan got up to serenade the squad at his rookie initiation karaoke.
Perhaps this was one moment, standing in front of a room of NFL heroes, when Gillan reflected disbelievingly on his incredible ascent to fame since docking Stateside six years earlier?
‘Not really, no,’ he shrugs. ‘Because I’ve been so dedicated these last four years that this doesn’t surprise me. This has been my goal. That’s why I haven’t been playing rugby for the last five years.’
Gillan failed miserably to buy a few beers in the pub to toast his achievement as fans fell over themselves to park a pint in front of their new punter. The fascination with his Scottish heritage continues to baffle and amuse Gillan as he meets his public.
‘Everyone I meet walking down the street or when people recognise me, they like to talk about Scotland,’ he says. ‘A lot of Americans like to talk about how they’re 10-per-cent Scottish or something like that.
‘People are curious and a lot say they really want to come and check out Scotland. I haven’t made it home in five years so I’m planning to return in January or February.’
The NFL Scot born on July 4 would love his homecoming to be pushed back until the latter month. For Super Bowl LIV is in Miami on Sunday, February 2 and the former no hoper Browns have the potential to be contenders.