Cal Sports Report

Cal Punter Jamieson Sheahan Declares for NFL Draft

The 25-year-old from Australia was second in the Pac-12 in punting average and had college eligibility remaining

Jake Curtis

Cal punter Jamieson Sheahan had never played in a competitive American football game before arriving in Berkeley in 2020, and now he has decided to try to make it in the NFL.

Sheahan, the Bears' punter the past three seasons, announced via social media on Thursday that he will give up his remaining college eligibility to enter the 2023 NFL draft.

Sheahan is part of a growing line of punters from Australia who became proficient punters by playing Aussie rules football down under.

He is a product of ProKick Australia, the training ground for Aussie rules players to become possible punters in an American college and pro football.

In 2022, the 25-year-old Sheahan was second in the Pac-12 and 14th nationally with a 45.1 yards per punt average. That's just 0.5 yards per punt below Bryan Anger's school-record 45.6 in 2010. Anger is now the Dallas Cowboys punter.

Sheahan had 21 punts inside the opponent's 20-yard line, and he was proficient at what has become known as the rugby-style punt, in which the punter takes a few steps to one side before launching a low end-over-end kick away from the returner.

 He has been working on creating high and long spiral kicks, which is preferred in the NFL. The right-footed Sheahan is also creative, as demonstrated in the tweet below, when he had to scramble to get off a kick off and ended up getting it away left-footed.

Four punters were taken in the 2022 NFL draft -- two in the fourth round, one in the sixth round and one in the seventh round.

Ex-Cal standout Anger was taken in the third round of the 2012 NFL draft and has been in the NFL ever since.  He is currently operating on a three-year, $9 million contract with the Cowboys.

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Cover photo of Jamieson Sheahan is by Darren Yamashita, USA TODAY Sports

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Jake Curtis
JAKE CURTIS

Jake Curtis worked in the San Francisco Chronicle sports department for 27 years, covering virtually every sport, including numerous Final Fours, several college football national championship games, an NBA Finals, world championship boxing matches and a World Cup. He was a Cal beat writer for many of those years, and won awards for his feature stories.

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