{"id":506981,"date":"2026-02-27T06:27:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T06:27:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/506981\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T06:27:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T06:27:11","slug":"super-bowl-winner-michael-dickson-puts-matt-burtons-boot-up-with-nfl-punters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/506981\/","title":{"rendered":"Super Bowl winner Michael Dickson puts Matt Burton’s boot up with NFL punters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Intense attention to detail, a big leg and a bit of delusion.<\/p>\n

That is what Australian Super Bowl hero Michael Dickson says it would take for NRL star Matt Burton to make the leap into the high-stakes world of NFL punting.<\/p>\n

Burton’s towering bombs have garnered comparison to NFL punts for years, with the Canterbury five-eighth recently filmed blasting the pigskin more than 60 metres at preseason training.<\/p>\n

Loading Instagram content<\/p>\n

The 25-year-old has admitted his interest in a code hop and had the chance to train at the Las Vegas Raiders’ facilities this week as the Bulldogs prepared for the NRL’s opening round at Allegiant Stadium.<\/p>\n

Sydney-born Dickson follows the AFL more closely than the NRL, having previously dreamed of an Aussie Rules career as a member of the Sydney Swans academy.<\/p>\n

But the newly minted Super Bowl champions have no doubt an NRL athlete of Burton’s calibre could transition into the NFL if he wanted.<\/p>\n

“I’m sure he could do it,” the Seattle Seahawks punter told AAP.<\/p>\n

“It’s quite different to Aussie Rules and league, the sweet spot (on the ball) is completely different. He would eventually find the sweet spot kicking an NFL ball.”<\/p>\n

Dickson’s punting journey took him to Melbourne to train with Prokick Australia, on to college at the University of Texas and finally to Seattle when the Seahawks drafted him in 2018.<\/p>\n

Aussie stars as Seahawks win Super Bowl<\/a><\/p>\n

The Seattle Seahawks overawe the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LX as punter Michael Dickson becomes the second ever Australian NFL champion.<\/p>\n

The 30-year-old has risen in the ranks to become the NFL’s highest-paid punter and only the second Australian to play on a winning Super Bowl team after his Seahawks defeated New England earlier this month.<\/p>\n

But the fame and fortune has been underpinned by meticulous hard work.<\/p>\n

Early on, Dickson realised American football punters were not afforded the same luxuries he once had on the footy field, and what Burton has playing NRL.<\/p>\n

“In league, you can hit a bad ball and be like, ‘That’s it, I want to make this tackle, I want to do something here (to make amends)’,” said Mingle ambassador Dickson.<\/p>\n

“(In the NFL) you might only get three punts a game, or four punts a game. And if one or two of them aren’t perfect, you can still hit a decent ball but it’s not perfect, then 50 per cent of your game wasn’t up to standard.<\/p>\n

\"Matt<\/p>\n

Matt Burton has one of the biggest boots in the NRL. (Getty Images: Matt King)<\/p>\n

“It’s very easy to hit one good punt.<\/p>\n

“But it’s really quite difficult to have a year where out of 70 punts, 65 of them are really good punts. That’s a very hard thing to do, so I give it the attention and the effort that it deserves.”<\/p>\n

Since 2020, Dickson has kept journals documenting and analysing almost one thousand punts he has sent up in games and training sessions.<\/p>\n

Off the park, he reads books on stoicism, performance psychology and discipline as he pushes to master his craft.<\/p>\n

Dickson counts Ryan Holiday and Michael Gervais among his favourite authors, and was given a Kindle for Christmas to up his reading game this off-season.<\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily podcast<\/a><\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily is your daily sports conversation. We dive into the biggest story of the day and get you up to speed with everything else that’s making headlines.<\/p>\n

“I try to leave no stone unturned,” Dickson said.<\/p>\n

“It’s about extreme discipline in the detail.”<\/p>\n

Aside from working hard, Dickson said to make it in the NFL Burton would need to be physically up to scratch and believe in himself to an almost excessive degree.<\/p>\n

“You’ve got to have a big leg, and you have to be somewhat delusional in the game,” he said.<\/p>\n

“A lot of the time, you’re going out there when the game’s not going well, the offence wasn’t doing their thing. You need to go out there and think, I’m about to flip this game.”<\/p>\n

AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Intense attention to detail, a big leg and a bit of delusion. That is what Australian Super Bowl…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":506982,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,2623,13217,248587,761,762,593,158,51188,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-506981","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nrl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-las-vegas","11":"tag-matt-burton","12":"tag-michael-dickson","13":"tag-national-rugby-league","14":"tag-nationalrugbyleague","15":"tag-nfl","16":"tag-nrl","17":"tag-punter","18":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}