Devon Allen has been thrust into the limelight, but what may surprise you, is that the Philadelphia Eagles rookie is trying his best to juggle two careers.
The wide receiver will have to cope with the dual demands of athletics and football. Allen secured a spot at the World Athletics Championship next month for the USA and he has shown what he can produce when it comes to the hurdles.
Recently, Allen produced the third-fastest time in the history of the 110m hurdles when he blitzed his way to a time of 12.84 seconds at the Diamond League meeting in Paris.
However, just nine days after he hopes to compete at the World Athletics Championships, Allen will be swapping his spikes for pads as he is put through his paces for a pre-season training camp for the Eagles.
With a new NFL season drawing closer, Allen will be hoping to make an impression as his football career has been stagnated by injuries. Allen suffered two anterior cruciate ligament injuries while playing football and combining track duties while at the University of Oregon from 2013 to 2016.
Explaining in a recent interview about his NFL career, Allen admitted gridiron has always been his first love, but injuries have held him back.
He said: “I just like to play football. If I didn’t have any knee injuries in college, I probably would have been in the NFL for five years by now.
“I probably would have just gone down the draft route and found out what I could do in the off-season with track.”
Allen is one of those multi-talented sportsmen, who shouldn’t necessarily be pigeonholed into one category and there have been multiple examples of athletes, who have proved they can cut it in various sports. Ashleigh Barty, who hung up her tennis racquet earlier this year, was initially a fabulous cricketer.
As far as the NFL is concerned, Allen and the Eagles will be hoping to kick on in the forthcoming campaign. In the previous campaign, the Eagles were in fine fettle, but they came unstuck in the Wild Card stage of the playoffs as they crashed to a 31-15 defeat against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
The Eagles will be hoping to go deeper in the playoffs this time and they have a big fan base. As always, the NFL will make for compelling viewing and naturally, bookmakers will be piling in with prices on who will reach the playoffs and who will be crowned Super Bowl champions. At some of the biggest NJ sports betting sites, such as BetMGM, you will find tons of futures odds, as well as player props for who will be Rookie of the Year or wind up with the most touchdowns.
Allen’s athletics career is showing signs that he is the real deal. Although he has professed that football is his first love, coping with the dual demands of athletics and football means that eventually, something will have to give. Eagles fans will be hoping that it is athletics that is forced to take a back seat.