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Twenty-three sacks in a single season is already an NFL record. So why is Myles Garrett spending his offseason learning how to hit people harder from a guy who spent his career tackling without pads?
Garrett’s arrived in Los Angeles this year, and he’s clearly not interested in coasting. The pass rusher — widely considered a lock for the Hall of Fame someday — swapped the “Cleveland” jersey for a Rams one after a trade that sent him from the Browns’ rebuilding mess to a team now sitting as the betting favorite for this year’s Super Bowl. The number attached to that move: $208 million, the richest deal ever handed to a defensive player.
That kind of contract would make most players ease up a little. Garrett went the other direction. He brought in Billy Coffey, an Australian rugby coach, to rework how he actually makes contact with opposing players.
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Coffey isn’t some random hire, either. He’s spent years building out what he calls a system for collision biomechanics — basically, the physics behind how a body transfers force into another body on impact. His focus sits on three things: hip extension, where the head goes, and how force actually moves through contact. Rugby’s been refining this stuff for over a hundred years, mostly because without pads, bad tackling technique gets punished immediately and painfully.
Coffey didn’t even know who Garrett was when the whole thing started.
“With the whole social media thing, I get hit up all the time by players in the US to come over,” Coffey told the Newcastle Herald. “I got a message from this guy called Shey which said I really want you to meet with Myles Garrett. I said, ‘No dramas, here is my number.’ I had no idea who Myles Garrett was. I asked a few mates if this guy was any good. They were like, ‘probably the best in the world right now.’”
“I flew to the US and spent a week designing tricks he wants to bring in next season. He wants to get better. The NFL players absorb detail. I’ll give him 25 cues, and the next hit he would nail all 25. I’ll tell you what, he knows how to hit.”
That’s not a small claim, considering Garrett’s already the best pure pass rusher in the league. Coffey’s methods apparently work fast — 25 technical cues absorbed in one session is the kind of learning speed that makes coordinators drool.
Word’s clearly spreading. Coffey’s already worked sessions with the UCLA Bruins, and he’s got a meeting lined up next week with — of all teams — the Cleveland Browns. He’s also been talking with Ohio State’s coaching staff. Whether or not this Australian rugby-to-NFL pipeline turns into something bigger remains to be seen, but it wouldn’t be the first time an outside discipline reshaped how American football players approach contact.
Garrett and the Rams will find out soon enough if the new technique translates to Sundays (or, in this case, a Thursday). Los Angeles opens its 2026 season overseas, facing the San Francisco 49ers in Melbourne on September 10 at 8:35 p.m. EST — a fitting location, given where Garrett’s new hitting lessons came from.
