A 70-yard kick wasn’t Jaffer Murphy’s original plan.
It was longer than any kick made in any football game ever played, but the few spectators and teammates lining the sidelines at the University of Texas at San Antonio’s pro day wanted to see it.
“Se-ven-ty! Se-ven-ty!” they chanted.
Murphy smiled. He had made a 70-yarder before. But doing it in front of NFL scouts?
Screw it, let’s change the course of my entire life, he thought.
“I just remember the explosion of the sound when it came off his foot,” UTSA coach Jeff Traylor said. “But I’d already seen him do it. He’s freakishly talented.”
Murphy knew it was good as soon as his foot made contact. And cheers from the sideline interrupted the sound of the ball landing in the net hanging behind the uprights.
Murphy served almost exclusively as UTSA’s kickoff specialist last season, never attempting a field goal in an FBS game. But earlier in March, he became this NFL Draft season’s viral star, making kicks of 50, 55, 57, 61, 65 and 70 yards, running a 4.5-second 40-yard dash and showing off a 45-inch vertical.
It morphed him into something close to a gridiron Paul Bunyan, a living, breathing, kicking unicorn that feels like a tall tale. Is this guy real?
Murphy’s real. And his journey — taking him from Liberia to college soccer to Division II football to, briefly, Bill Belichick’s North Carolina, before a final stop at UTSA — is as long as the kick that put him on the football map.
Murphy was born in 2001 in Liberia amid the nation’s second civil war. Struggling and hoping to provide their son a better life, his parents put him up for adoption a few years later.
He was only 4 years old when Sean and Maya Murphy adopted him in 2006 and brought him to their home in Marion, Iowa. He was the oldest of three boys they adopted from the war-torn nation. But doctors quickly discovered that he’d contracted malaria and pneumonia.
“He bounced back,” Maya Murphy said. “And once he came out of that, he never stopped moving.”
When he was in Liberia, he’d been told in America he could play soccer. At the orphanage, he’d played a rudimentary version on a dirt field, with a ball made of rubber bands and string. Managing to get the ball away from older kids at the orphanage often proved difficult.
His first birthday gift in America: soccer balls. Then he began playing in a local YMCA league.
“His face just lit up when he was out there running around,” Maya Murphy said, “and he ran circles around those other little kids.”
Jaffer Murphy’s first sport was soccer, and he played it collegiately at Drake and Florida Gulf Coast. (Courtesy of Maya Murphy)
He played on club teams through high school and moonlighted as his high school football team’s kicker, once making 48- and 56-yard kicks in a single game.
“I had success there,” Murphy said, “but I never took it seriously.”
Soccer was his sport. Staying close to home, Murphy started college at Drake in Des Moines and made the Missouri Valley Conference All-Freshman team. Then he left for Florida Gulf Coast in search of warmer weather.
After transferring, he spent Christmas 2021 with family. On Christmas Day, his father, Sean, began feeling ill. The next day, a persistent cough appeared.
He tested positive for pneumonia and COVID-19, but after staying away from the family for a few days, he wasn’t improving. A little more than two weeks later, he died at age 60.
“It was all just such a shock to all of us,” Maya Murphy said.
Jaffer stayed with his mother in the hospital. They were holding Sean’s hand when he took his final, labored breaths, and in the days that followed, Jaffer promised to take care of the family with his father gone.
He shouldered more of the emotional load and did his best to support his mother, who works for an aerospace company and still lives in Iowa. He took on the responsibility of organizing family gatherings and making sure his younger siblings were OK. But trying to do it 1,400 miles away weighed on him.
And his soccer career wasn’t going how he’d hoped. He wasn’t receiving as much playing time. He wasn’t enjoying it anymore. The path to a professional career was dwindling.
“He called me after his consult after the (2023) season and just said, ‘Mom, I’m losing my love for this. I don’t know how much my heart is in it, but I don’t want to stop doing athletics,’” Maya Murphy said.
“Why don’t you try kicking?” she asked.
He liked the idea. He said he received some mild interest from FCS power South Dakota State as a high school prospect. But he had little experience and even less film. He hadn’t kicked a football since high school.
So he went to Dick’s Sporting Goods, bought three footballs and a tee for $90 and started kicking. He entered the transfer portal with plans to switch sports and started filming and posting videos of himself kicking on his social media channels.
He found a kicking coach, Jacob Enns, and drove four hours round trip from Fort Myers, Fla., to Tampa for sessions to refine his rusty technique. In the meantime, he was taking classes at FGCU and working as a server at a local country club.
Back to Back training session with @EnnsZoneKicking 70 Yard Field Goal pic.twitter.com/E2RhFL8j2f
— JafferMurphy (@jaffermurphy) June 26, 2024
Murphy sent film to big schools such as Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky and North Carolina but didn’t hear back. Enns knew with no film, finding a D1 opportunity would be difficult, so he sent Murphy’s homemade videos to coaches at lower levels. Eventually, the staff at Lake Erie College, a DII school in Ohio, liked what it saw and offered him a scholarship.
“I put up good numbers, but my percentage just really tanked toward the end of the season. It was frustrating because a good percentage really does bring eyes to you,” Murphy said. “I had big numbers, but my percentage was low.”
As a first-year kicker, Murphy was powerful but unrefined. He set a school record with a 60-yard field goal but made just 13 of 21 overall. When he entered the transfer portal after the 2024 season, the low percentage led to low interest at first.
Two FCS programs, UT Martin and Houston Christian, showed interest. But on Jan. 5, the night before he planned to make his choice, he got a message from North Carolina’s assistant director of player personnel, Cory Giddings.
“Hey Jaffer, I came across your profile and video and you’ve got a heck of a leg,” it read.
Murphy said he was interested. Giddings said they needed a kickoff specialist.
“I told him, ‘Hey, I know it’s late, but can we hop on a call? Because I’m about this if you’re about this,’” Murphy said.
He joined the program as a preferred walk-on. But he struggled in his spring in Chapel Hill. Some days, he hit everything, he said. Some days, he missed everything. A few kickoffs would careen out of bounds, a cardinal sin for a kickoff specialist.
The Journey. pic.twitter.com/lKbqFTJ9Jr
— JafferMurphy (@jaffermurphy) March 23, 2025
Belichick brought attention to the program. Murphy would line up for a kick, and a documentary camera would be perched nearby to get the shot. Or Belichick would add pressure by quietly telling Murphy, “Don’t miss it,” as he lined up for a kick.
“I was so grateful for it, but maybe I wasn’t quite ready,” Murphy said.
After spring football, Belichick called him into his office. Murphy wasn’t sure what to expect from his first one-on-one conversation with the Tar Heels coach.
“He sits down with me, and the first words out of his mouth were, ‘We cannot continue with you on the 105-man roster,’” Murphy said. “I was super confused what that meant because it’s my second semester playing college football.”
Belichick explained Murphy was being cut from the team.
He’d never been cut before. But Belichick complimented his leg, said he had lots of potential and told him to get in touch with Gary Zauner, a renowned kicking coach.
“That was the worst and best thing ever,” he said. “It hit my heart. I was crushed by the words but encouraged to know I have potential to be at the Division I level.”
He re-entered the portal. After a few days, he heard from UTSA, which told him it believed he could handle kickoffs and compete for the place-kicking job.
“Instantly, in my head, I was like, ‘That’s all I need,’” he said.
He told UTSA’s coaches he would pack his life up into his car, drive to San Antonio and try out. His car was packed up so tight the rear window was blocked. There was no looking back.
They tried to make it clear: He didn’t have a roster spot. Nothing was guaranteed.
Murphy understood. He wanted them to save their time and money. He was betting on himself.
“I’ll go try out and leave it at that. You guys can decide afterward,” Murphy told them. “I told them I just trusted God.”
He drove 17 of the 20 hours before his mom convinced him to take a break. He pulled into the parking lot of a hotel and slept in his car for four hours before finishing the drive.
On the second day of his visit, he walked onto the practice field and boomed his first kickoff over the practice field’s fence.
“I even impressed myself on that one,” he said.
The staff had him kick a few more the other direction into the wind. Then, special teams coordinator Zach Brown approached him and held out his hand.
“Welcome to Texas,” he said.
“My heart was just so happy to hear that. I could have had the worst day possible and had to call my mom and tell her I had to come home and find a new plan,” Murphy said. “But in that moment, I just got emotional and thanked them so much for the opportunity.”
He walked away and began making plans for the fall. But in one afternoon, he’d already made a big fan in Traylor, the UTSA coach. And it had nothing to do with his leg strength.
“His spirit is just so pure and innocent. He was just so grateful I was giving him a chance,” Traylor said. “He couldn’t believe it.”
The kicking competition never quite materialized. Michael Petro won it easily. Murphy, still new to the sport, was still powerful but erratic. Coaches gave him a nickname: “Wild thing,” a send-up to “Major League” protagonist Ricky Vaughn, played by Charlie Sheen.
When he trotted onto the field for a kick, the coaches often greeted him with the song bearing the name.
“Wild thing,” they serenaded, “you make my heart sing.”
“But man,” Traylor said, “he just kept getting better and better.”
Jaffer Murphy handled 88 kickoffs for UTSA but never attempted a field goal. (Courtesy of UTSA Athletics)
Petro proved reliable on shorter kicks, but by season’s end, Murphy had won the right to attempt longer kicks if the situation arose. It didn’t, but he made an extra point in UTSA’s 57-20 bowl win over FIU.
Of his 88 kickoffs, 54 were touchbacks. Three did go out of bounds. Wild thing, indeed.
But the leg was obvious. When Murphy swung through, it sounded and looked different. And before, during and after practice, he kept working even though he didn’t get a chance to show his progress as a place kicker on the field.
Eighteen NFL teams attended UTSA’s pro day. Murphy had been training in Tampa. He’d only run the 40 a few times before notching the 4.47 with scouts watching. And three months of training can only do so much for athletes who have been playing football most of their lives. For a kicker who’d been kicking field goals barely a year, the gains were massive.
And when he returned to San Antonio ahead of pro day, his holder, Caile Hogan, had some advice.
“He’s like, these scouts are not gonna know you. So you gotta do something that wows them,” Murphy said Hogan told him.
Together, they decided to delete a handful of kicks from the 40- to 50-yard range and start booming kicks from beyond 50 yards to catch scouts’ eyes.
So he wrote down six numbers.
33. 50. 55. 57. 61. 65.
He took two kicks from each and made 11 of 12.
“He was in a groove. He was like a basketball player who couldn’t miss a shot or a golfer that couldn’t miss a putt,” Traylor said. “He was on fire.”
Then, he went viral.
Pat McAfee talked about him on his show. NFL insider Adam Schefter posted about him on X. Murphy got a message from the NFL asking for permission to tag him in an Instagram post highlighting his day, too.
“I kind of started to physically shake,” Murphy said. “It was all kind of unreal.”
Murphy said he has heard from one NFL team since the workout and expects to hear from at least one more soon. Scouts at pro day also asked him to run defensive back drills. Mostly out of curiosity. But a kicker with that kind of speed has special teams coordinators’ creative juices flowing.
“If I’d have had him longer, hell, you’d look at doing a whole lot of different things with him,” Traylor said.
The NFL Draft begins April 23. Murphy might or might not hear his name on Day 3. But after his pro day, it seems likely he’ll at least be invited to a camp. And there’s no telling what his leg might be able to do by the time he does.
“I’ve always told him potential is just everything you’re not. But he’s got it all. He can do anything he wants to,” Traylor said. “I would never bet against Jaffer. Ever.”