Peter King in his Monday Morning Quarterback column has lots of nice things to say about this young man:
For the sheer story-telling of it, Havard Rugland has to be this morning’s winner. He’ll tell his story at The MMQB in detail Tuesday, but the short version is this: Soccer player from a small town in southwest Norway, enchanted with American football. Ordered a football online in early 2011, began kicking it for fun, made a YouTube video of him powerfully kicking a football, Norwegian TV picked it up, it got some buzz on American TV, and the Jets invited him for a tryout late last year. Detroit tried him out, then signed him last spring.
“I scored some points in a real football game,” Rugland said from the Lions’ facility Sunday, still sounding incredulous about it all in his quite-good English. “It is such an incredible feeling, when that first kick went through.”
It showed. For a third-quarter first-preseason-game field goal, Rugland’s 49-yarder engendered huge emotion on the Lions’ sidelines. Linebacker Stephen Tulloch lifted Rugland in the air, and the team gathered ‘round, pounding him on the pads and helmet. It’s hard to have a feel-good, memorable moment in a first preseason game, but this was certainly one.
