Rodrigo Blankenship still vividly remembers the end of his most recent stint in the NFL.
“I can’t put the blame on anybody but myself,” Blankenship said in an exclusive interview with Sports Illustrated, after walking through the details of his 2023 preseason release from the Buccaneers.
“I didn't kick as well as I needed to to compete for the job, and so they did what they had to do, and it's turned out to be a really good decision for them,” he continued. “It's still gut-wrenching to have to hear that come out of somebody else's mouth, but, you know, it just served as motivation.
“I have to be a better version of myself than I was the last time I set foot on an NFL football field.”
Two years and one season in the UFL later, Blankenship—the goggle-wearing, fan-favorite ex-Georgia specialist—is confident that he is. And he’s committed to backdooring his way back into the NFL in the most contemporary way possible.
Every week, Blankenship posts a video of him replicating three of the longest kicks from the previous weekend’s NFL slate for his roughly 300k followers on TikTok, and he plans to keep going until he gets a tryout from one of the league’s 32 teams. That, plus the UFL stint, makes for a genius move no matter how you slice it; as TikTok has grown in popularity, savvy artists, up-and-coming comedians and even internship-needy college students have repeatedly capitalized on the app’s reach to bypass traditional barriers of entry in their respective industries, often to much success.
Why wouldn’t that same gimmick work in the world of sports, too?
“I've seen other free-agent guys that will go on their social media and say, ‘I'm gonna make all the kicks that were missed during this NFL week because I'm trying to show teams that I'm better than whoever they have on their team,’” he explained. “But I know the work that it takes to get to that position, and so I didn't really like the idea of trying to, you know, say ‘I'm better than you.’”
Instead, Blankenship opted to recreate what he believed to be the best and most impressive kicks from each weekend of football action, a premise he then tweaked to just his top three longest kicks for 2025.
That change “keeps the volume down for me, which is good so that I can stay a little bit fresher during the course of the season,” he explained, but is also aligned with the increasing amount of 50-plus yarders we’re seeing on the gridiron week after week.
“That's always been something that I think NFL teams have been concerned about with me—does he have the leg strength to make these long kicks?” Blankenship said. “Hopefully, I was able to prove that to a certain extent in the UFL this year. I made a bunch of 50-plus-yard field goals, more than I ever had before in my career, but also I'm trying to continue with that with this series.”
As sort of the cherry on top, fans to seem to love it. Droves of them show up in the comment section each week, urging their favorite team to give Blankenship another chance or encourage him to keep at it.
“I've had a lot of positive reception, especially these first couple of weeks of the season,” he revealed of his most recent creations. “The engagement has been through the roof.”
Sometimes, his audience might even offer him a helpful piece of advice. Last year, for instance, fans suggested he put something in front of him to simulate the height of the defensive line, so those watching would know for sure that the kick had cleared. At another point, he started wearing both a helmet and shoulder pads—again at onlookers’ behest—to more accurately replicate in-game play. And this season, he even added a second camera angle down by the uprights so viewers could better see the angle at which a kick goes through.
The end result—video after video of long-range or otherwise difficult makes—is a pretty indisputable show of talent, not only as it relates to football, but also social media, which, as great as it can be, is also quite an unforgiving world to wade into.
“It's nothing that I haven't been used to before in my college career or in my pro career to this point,” Blankenship said of the more unsavory attention he receives. “I know just by the nature of my position, people are either going to be singing my praises or they're either gonna be trying to kick me to the curb. So it's nothing new.”
It’s worth noting that a not-insignificant number of current NFL kickers either entered or re-entered the league by way of the UFL, just as Blankenship hopes to do. Brandon Aubrey, the Cowboys’ superstar who earlier this year nailed a 64-yarder to send the game to overtime, for example, signed with Dallas following two seasons with the Birmingham Stallions.
“I've invested so much into it that I just feel like I owe it to myself to continue to try to,” Blankenship said of his continued journey. “Make sure that all of that work wasn't for nothing.”
And really, it has been a lot of work. Following a high-profile college career at Georgia, where he kicked the longest field goal in Rose Bowl history, Blankenship went undrafted in 2020 before signing with the Colts, for whom he played 22 games across two full seasons. He was released in September '22, after missing a game-winning field goal in overtime, then signed to the Cardinals’ practice squad in October of that same year. Just a month later, he was cut again.
But not terribly long after a much-needed hip surgery and the Bucs heartbreak in 2023, Blankenship’s performance at a UFL combine in 2024—in conjunction with his TikToks—landed him a job with the St. Louis Battlehawks, where he put up some excellent numbers, Across 10 games in '25, he made 21 out of 22 attempts for a 95.5% field goal percentage, and, perhaps most crucially, went 5-for-6 on kicks longer than 50 yards.
“I just want to let teams know that I'm in a really good place after my surgery. I feel like it's not holding me back in any way, and physically, I feel really good,” he said, detailing his pitch for all 32 coaches and GMs. “I feel like I'm kicking the ball really well, as good or better than I've ever kicked before.
“And I would just say, like, check the tape. Earlier this year, not even four months ago, I was in a full uniform with a snap and a hold, with a rush coming at me, with upwards of maybe 25, 30,000 fans at St. Louis, getting as close as you can to an NFL game again. … I produced at a higher level than I ever have before, you know, not even four months ago.”
In other words, he’s already got the attitude, the platform and the prerequisite experience to perform at the game's highest level. Now, all he needs is a chance. And he's ready to post until he gets it.
“Something that my wife would say that I'm really good at is taking advantage of the power of asking,” Blankenship said, adding later: “It has been ... a rewarding journey in some ways, but it's not over yet. Hopefully, I can just continue to be consistent with it, continue to put myself out there, and hopefully, eventually, it will pay off fully.
"I'll get that next tryout and then it'll all be worth it."
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Rodrigo Blankenship Is Attempting an NFL Comeback—One TikTok Video at a Time.
