The Premier Lacrosse League Continues It's Quest For Domination By Taking Former Falcons' Receiver Jared Bernhardt From The NFL
Jamie Squire. Getty Images.For the longest time, it was hard enough to get guys to commit to playing professional lacrosse over taking jobs at banking firms on Wall St. You'd have guys who were nasty in college and would be incredible pros, but they couldn't give the time to make $15k playing pro lacrosse in the summer when they had a great job at Goldman Sachs already lined up for them after college.
Pro lacrosse was losing players left and right to JP Morgan. Flash forward a few years, and now the National Football League is losing players to professional lacrosse.
Jared Bernhardt was an absolute monster on the lacrosse field at Maryland. He won a National Championship in 2017, and won the Tewaaraton Award as the best player in the country in 2021. But instead of immediately going to play pro lacrosse after Maryland, he decided he'd give football another chance. He transferred to Division II Ferris State, led them to a DII National Championship as their quarterback, and was later signed by Atlanta as an undrafted free agent in 2022.
He made the Falcons' 53-man roster as an undrafted free agent. He's a freak athlete with insane IQ. If he really wanted to, I'm sure he could have found a way to stick it out in the league for a few more years. Maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars per year, eventually have a few monster seasons like Chris Hogan, cash out and call it a career.
But professional lacrosse is in a spot now where you don't need to figure out a way to grind it out in the NFL for a few years going from team to team. There are 32 teams in the league, and 53 roster spots on each team. That means there are 1,696 players in the NFL. Sure, the PLL has only taken 2 of those 1,696 away from the NFL with Chris Hogan and Jared Bernhardt. But that's definitely 2 more than anyone would have ever seen coming.
P.S. -- The PLL season gets going tonight up in Albany. The Carolina Chaos and New York Atlas open up the season at 6pm, followed by California Redwoods vs Denver Outlaws at 8:30. Both games are on ESPN+.