The baby bottles crowd the kitchen counter where NFL contracts used to sit. In the corner of his room, a changing table occupies the space that once showcased Brock Miller's collection of professional football jerseys — throwback Rams uniforms, practice squad gear, and spring league memorabilia from more than a decade spent chasing his dream.
Now 34 years old, Miller moves through his San Diego home in the early morning hours, careful not to wake his wife and four-month-old son. His left foot still carries the muscle memory of 50-plus NFL tryouts and retains the precise mechanics needed to send a football spiraling counterclockwise through the air. Those peculiar physics —the mirror-image spin that separates left-footed punters from righties — have defined the last 10 years of his professional life.
The domestic scene at home tells two stories at once. There's the new father adjusting his training schedule around diaper changes and feeding times. Then there's the veteran specialist who somehow finds himself in the strangest position of his football career. Miller is still improving at his craft, still fielding calls from NFL teams, but he’s also at peace with the uncertainty that continues to cloud every season.
"I came home after this UFL season, and it's like I'm actually still getting better," Miller said in a statement that manages to capture both the promise and the peculiar torment of his journey through professional football's shadows.
For over a decade, Brock Miller has existed in the margins of America's most popular sport. He’s been summoned by desperate teams, flown across the country for 15-minute workouts, and then sent home to wait for the next call.
He has built an entire career out of being needed but never truly wanted. This is the story of professional football's most persistent ghost, the left-footed specialist who has spent 10 years proving that sometimes the most extraordinary careers unfold completely out of sight.
The art and science of punting a football
The science behind his career longevity is rather simple.
"Just like a quarterback's spiral, a right-footed punt spins clockwise, and a left-footed punt spins counterclockwise," Miller explained. "That doesn't sound like much until you're underneath it trying to catch it. When you're used to seeing how a ball fades one way when it turns over, and then suddenly it's mirrored, that's really hard to adjust to."
Miller's punts present a disorienting challenge for NFL returners who have spent years conditioning themselves to track the familiar clockwise rotation. The ball appears to drift and fade in unexpected directions, as its counterclockwise spin creates subtle but noticeable differences in trajectory and timing. Under stadium lights, with wind and rain and 70,000 screaming fans, those microsecond miscalculations can become fumbles. Those fumbles can become field position.
Field position can win games.
"It's really hard," Miller said of the challenge facing returners. "In college, not a lot of returners, even really good ones, have had a chance to catch that kind of spin. So now they're doing it in the pros, and teams need to get somebody in to give them a couple live looks at it."
The business model is brutally efficient. Teams identify which opponents have left-footed punters on their upcoming schedules — currently Tress Way (Commanders), Matt Araiza (Chiefs), Corey Bojorquez (Browns), Corliss Waitman (Steelers), Jamie Gillan (Giants), and Kai Kroeger (Saints).
They call Miller or one of the handful of other left-footed specialists scattered across the country. They fly him in, cover his hotel costs, and pay him a meal stipend to punt anywhere between 15 and 50 footballs at their return specialists during practice.
Then they send him home.
"It sounds so ridiculous to bring in a guy to kick a couple balls just so they can get the opposite spin," Miller acknowledged, "but with as much pressure as there is in the NFL to win, when it comes down to those types of plays, they'll fork out the cash and fly somebody out to do it."
The fraternity of left-footed punters remains small but has actually grown recently. Just two years ago, only three left-footed punters occupied active rosters on Week 1 — that number has doubled to six today.
But the growth has also isolated him in a peculiar niche, part of an invisible brotherhood that exists primarily to help teams prepare for each other.
In a sport that defaults to right-handed dominance, Miller has spent his career as the necessary anomaly. He’s become the backwards specialist in a forward-facing game. Every ball he punts is a reminder that in football, as in life, sometimes being different is exactly what makes you indispensable, even if no one wants to keep you around once that difference is no longer needed.
Those who can't do, punt
As a freshman at Santa Fe Christian High School in San Diego, Miller watched his middle school flag football teammates transition to tackle football with a mixture of both excitement and dread. He may have had the speed to play receiver, but at his size, the prospect of getting hit by much larger opponents was genuinely terrifying.
"I'm still a hundred pounds soaking wet. I'm kind of scared to get hit playing receiver. I've never done it before," Miller recalled. "How can I be on the team and not get killed? And that's literally how it started."
The solution came from an unlikely source during a Thanksgiving Turkey Bowl with his extended family in Los Angeles. Scattered across a dusty football field were the remnants of previous games, including water bottles, forgotten cleats, and a small kicking tee nearly buried under grass and dirt. Miller had never played soccer and had no formal kicking background, but something about that neglected piece of equipment caught his attention.
He placed a football on the goal line and tried to inch it over the crossbar. Then he stepped back a few yards and tried again. Then a few more. The ball sailed over, and Miller felt something click into place. It wasn’t just the mechanics of kicking, but the addictive pull of measurable improvement that hooked him.
"I got addicted to trying to just scoot the ball back further and further," he said. "My first-ever goal that I put into place was like, ‘Wow, what if I trained for a whole year?’"
That obsession carried him through high school, where he became the starting JV kicker as a sophomore and eventually handled both kicking and punting duties on varsity. But it was the transition to punting that would define his professional future, even though it essentially happened by accident.
Miller was recruited to FCS-level Southern Utah University as a 0-star kicker prospect. He performed well as a freshman, connecting on several kicks from 50-plus yards, but the coaching staff recruited a more talented kicker: Colton Cook, a former MLS practice squad player from the Colorado Rapids who had never punted a day in his life.
The coaching staff made it clear that if Miller wanted to stay on the field, he would need to punt. The prospect frustrated him initially. He had fallen in love with the scoring aspect of kicking, the immediate gratification of putting points on the board.
Punting felt like a demotion.
He even considered transferring, but the coaching staff's ultimatum instead proved the pivot point of his entire career.
"I would've never sniffed the pros if I had just kicked for four years," Miller reflected. "Transitioning into punting, my punting ability kept improving while my kicking stayed at the high-school level. At the time, I thought it was going to be a bad thing, but it ended up being the best thing to ever happen to me.”
By his senior season, Miller had earned recognition as one of the nation's top FCS punters, earning a spot on the 2013 CFPA FCS Punter Award Watch List alongside future NFL punters Jordan Berry and Lachlan Edwards.
The left-footed advantage that would define his professional career wasn't even on his radar at the time. Miller was simply a college punter getting better each season, unaware that his dominant foot would eventually become both his calling card and his curse in the NFL.
"It really worked out exactly the way God intended it, which is just amazing looking back," he said.
The first break
His first major opportunity — and subsequent heartbreak — came at Gary Zauner's kicking combine in 2014. A former special teams coordinator with the Vikings and Ravens, Zauner had built a reputation as a gatekeeper for college specialists hoping to reach the NFL.
If you performed well at his combine, Zauner would use his relationships with coordinators around the league to help get you noticed.
Miller arrived as a college senior, coming off two strong seasons at Southern Utah. He performed well at Zauner's combine and was placed in the group of specialists deemed "potentially NFL ready." His agent assured him that rookie minicamp invites or undrafted free agent contracts would follow after the draft.
Then the 2014 NFL Draft came and went. Miller watched from a restaurant with his family and girlfriend (now his wife), waiting for his phone to ring. Other specialists from his group at the combine were getting calls, signing contracts, and receiving invites. His phone stayed silent.
"I saw other guys' names getting invited or getting signed as UDFAs that were in that same group as me from that combine," Miller recalled. "And I'm thinking, 'Any second now.' It was just crickets. Then the following day, still nothing."
Most players probably would have walked away. Miller had graduated with a degree in exercise science and human performance and could have started building a traditional career. Instead, he kept training, kept believing, kept his phone ready for the call that might never come.
The workouts started slowly during the 2015 season. First, the St. Louis Rams called, a surreal moment for someone who had grown up a Rams fan, imagining himself in their uniform while kicking footballs in his driveway.
Then Tampa Bay called. Then Denver. The invitations came sporadically but consistently, and Miller began to understand the economics of his situation.
Teams weren't necessarily evaluating him as a potential addition to their roster. They were bringing him in because he was left-footed, and they needed their returners to practice catching punts with counterclockwise spin before facing left-footed opponents.
Miller was becoming a human simulation, a living scout team punter whose only job was to replicate the experience their players would face on Sundays.
The realization was both crushing and liberating. After a couple of years of accumulating workout after workout with no contract offers, Miller began approaching these tryouts differently.
"At this point, I was kind of getting this chip on my shoulder. I'm doing this a lot, and nothing's happening from it. This kind of sucks," he admitted. "So I was going in kind of pissed off at these workouts, which was totally different from two years before, when I was just happy to be there."
The anger served him well. In 2016, he finally received rookie minicamp invites from the Colts and Raiders. The following year brought his first actual contract, a futures deal with the San Francisco 49ers.
It lasted four months before the new coaching staff cut him after the draft, but Miller had finally achieved something tangible. He had put pen to paper with an NFL team.
Between the workouts and brief contract stints, Miller cobbled together a living through whatever flexible work he could find. He did personal training for a few clients, worked for a startup company selling coaching software, and later took shifts as a valet at restaurants. Anything that would allow him to leave at a moment's notice if an NFL team called.
"That was always the back and forth," Miller explained. "I feel like I'm not getting ahead ... You just can't. Nothing really works when you're a free agent. You just can't go all in on something else."
The workout numbers began to accumulate in ways that defied logic — over 50 tryouts across more than 20 different NFL teams, most of them multiple times. Miller estimates the total number of times he's been in an NFL building for a workout approaches 60 or more. For context, many fringe NFL players typically get two or three such opportunities in their entire careers.
Each trip followed the same routine. A call early in the week, a flight on Thursday, a workout on Friday, handshakes, and a flight home. Sometimes he received a meal stipend or parking money. Sometimes he didn't. But he kept going, kept improving, kept hoping the next workout might be different.
"I genuinely just love kicking and punting," Miller says. "I think most guys would've hung it up [after the 49ers release]."
By 2017, Miller had become something unprecedented in modern professional sports. He was a career workout warrior, a specialist who had turned being used into an art form. He was building toward something, though neither he nor anyone else could quite define what that something might be.
A real chance with the Rams
The next call came from John “Bones” Fassel, the Rams' special teams coordinator who had watched Miller work out more than any other coach in the NFL. Fassel had brought Miller in for tryouts eight or nine times across different teams over a three-year span. He knew exactly what Miller could do, and in August 2019, he finally had the roster flexibility to sign him to an actual contract.
The pitch was perfect for both sides. Johnny Hekker, the Rams' All-Pro punter, could rest his leg during preseason games. Greg Zuerlein could do the same. Miller would handle all the punting and kicking duties in the second half of exhibition games, giving the starters a break while proving himself against NFL competition.
Putting on a Rams uniform represented the completion of a circle that began in Miller’s childhood.
"I was thinking to myself, if it all ended here, I officially made it. I had Rams jerseys in my closet that I'd wear as a kid, and now I get to put on the throwback uniforms for four weeks," Miller reflected. "This was literally the dream that I had as an eighth grader in the driveway."
His performance exceeded even his own expectations. Miller led the entire NFL in net punting average (a stat that measures total punt distance minus return yards) that summer. Everything he had worked toward over five years of professional grinding was crystallizing into the kind of preseason that had the potential to launch his career.
Miller felt the magic of it all. He was training alongside Sean McVay's championship-caliber team, learning from Hekker, one of the best punters in NFL history, and wearing the uniform of his childhood team while performing at an elite level. When the final preseason game ended, Miller was convinced this could be his breakthrough moment.
He was expectedly released as part of final roster cuts, but despite a summer’s worth of excellent NFL tape, he once again found himself out of a job.
Miller had punted better than almost anyone in the league during the preseason, but it didn't matter. His left-footed expertise wasn't needed on a permanent basis — it was only valuable when teams faced other lefty punters.
"I was truly at peace with whatever happens after this," Miller says of walking away from the Rams facility for the final time. "This was my childhood dream, and not only in the NFL, but with the team that I was a fan of. It was just absolutely insane."
The cruel irony was impossible to ignore. Miller had finally gotten his shot with his dream team, had performed at an NFL-caliber level, and had still been sent home. If leading the league in net punting average during the preseason wasn't enough to secure a roster spot, what would be?
The 2019 Rams preseason became both Miller's greatest triumph and his most painful lesson about the realities of professional football. Performance, it turned out, was only part of the equation. Timing, roster construction, salary-cap considerations, politics, and countless other factors outside his control would always matter just as much as how well he could punt a football.
But even in disappointment, Miller managed to find perspective. He had achieved his childhood dream, even if only temporarily. Everything that came after would be, in his own words, "icing on the cake."
A break in the XFL
The 2020 XFL draft gave Miller something he had never experienced in professional football: the certainty of being wanted. When the Seattle Dragons selected him that fall, he finally became "the guy" somewhere. He was the hand-picked starter who wouldn't need to compete for his job or wonder if he was just filling a temporary necessity.
"I didn't get to experience the draft call because I was coming back from a left-footed workout somewhere that was late in the fall,” Miller recalled. “I opened my phone when we landed, and I was tagged in a bunch of stuff.”
The moment lacked ceremony, sure, but the meaning was profound nonetheless. After years of existing on the margins of professional football, he was finally the focal point of a team's special teams unit.
The XFL gave Miller five games to showcase his abilities before COVID-19 shut down the world. The league folded, leaving him in limbo once again, but the brief taste of being a full-time starter had rekindled something that years of NFL workouts had nearly extinguished. The simple joy of playing football regularly had returned.
When the USFL emerged in 2022, Miller found himself facing another make-or-break moment in his life. At 31, he knew his window was narrowing, and only two teams expressed serious interest: the New Orleans Breakers and the New Jersey Generals. If neither selected him, he knew his playing career would likely be over.
"If neither one of these works out and they pick somebody else, there's no way I'm ever going to get back to the NFL if I'm not in this league, and I'm not playing," Miller remembered thinking. "One of these has to happen."
New Jersey's head coach was the highly respected Mike Riley, who had worked with Miller during his brief XFL stint. That connection proved important, as Miller soon got his draft call from the Generals. More importantly, he reunited with a coach who would go on to profoundly impact his life, both on and off the field.
"He's a legend. My son's middle name is Riley because of him," Miller said. "Of all the coaches I've ever been around, he had the biggest impact on me."
Miller flourished under Riley’s guidance. His 2022 season was arguably his best statistically in professional football, and he developed a close relationship with kicker Nick Rose, who had been his teammate during that brief 49ers stint years earlier. The team chemistry was everything Miller had hoped for in professional sports.
The 2024 season brought new dynamics with the formation of the UFL and Miller's transition to the Michigan Panthers. His teammate that season was Jake Bates, a former soccer player whose accuracy and leg strength would eventually earn him a contract with the Detroit Lions. Watching Bates succeed in the NFL while he remained on the outside was both inspiring and probably a little painful.
"Jake was just a real talent with a different story who kind of got lost in the shuffle, a diamond in the rough," Miller reflects. "They gave him the platform to get out and kick."
Unfortunately, Miller's own platform was starting to crumble. Despite another strong statistical performance in Michigan — he led the UFL in punt yards in 2024 — the team's general manager made it clear that Miller was not in their future plans. He was informed the team was looking to go in a different (read: younger) direction.
The spring leagues, Miller realized, were looking for the next Jake Bates or Brandon Aubrey, not a 34-year-old veteran who had been around these circuits for years. Even on-field excellence wasn't enough if you represented the past rather than the future.
"I think they're just trying to shuffle out some of the names that have been household kind of spring league names for a long time and potentially looking for someone who's going to get back to the [NFL]," Miller explains.
His transition into coaching began during this period, born partly from necessity and partly from genuine passion. Working with young specialists gives him purpose beyond his own playing career and helps him process the reality that his time as a player could be drawing to a close.
"It doesn't really feel like work helping these guys," he said of his coaching business.
The spring leagues had given Miller something the NFL never could — sustained playing time, statistical success, and the experience of being truly valued by coaches and teammates.
But they had also shown him the limits of that world, where even standout performance couldn't guarantee job security if you were perceived as part of the old guard rather than the next wave of talent.
Still here, still kickin'
His January 2025 tryout in Buffalo felt different from the 50-plus that came before it. Miller stepped onto the Bills' practice field with a mindset that had evolved through a decade of disappointments and small victories. The desperation was gone, replaced by something a little different. It was acceptance mixed with quiet confidence.
"I've just done this so many times and I know why I'm here," Miller explained. "So there's all the more reason to just go out and do what I do with absolutely zero pressure. I'm probably going home no matter what, so I might as well swing for the fences."
The Bills brought in Miller and another left-footed punter from the CFL to prepare for a playoff matchup against Matt Araiza and the Chiefs. But this time, they made it clear this wasn't just about tactical preparation.
The Bills insisted they wanted to evaluate both specialists for potential future opportunities. Miller punted well, as he almost always does, but the team ultimately signed a younger punter, Buccaneers 2022 fourth-round pick Jake Camarda.
Six months later, Miller reflects on that workout as his most recent contact with the NFL. At 34, he has reached an unusual equilibrium in his pursuit of professional football. His body continues to improve despite his age, which is a reality that both encourages and torments him.
Miller believes that the 2024 season was his best as a professional punter. It’s why he continues to keep the NFL dream alive even after all these years.
Fatherhood has reframed everything, though. Miller's four-month-old son has given him what he calls "a new why" for continuing his football journey. The motivation is no longer purely about personal achievement. Now, it's about showing his child what persistence looks like, about having a story to tell, about never giving up on dreams even when they seem impossible.
"Now I sort of have a new why with my son," Miller explained. "It'd be pretty cool to have him at least be at a game or a practice or something one more time now that he's here, just to say, 'Hey, when you were however many months old, you were at dad's last game with whatever team it was.'"
The sentiment reveals how Miller's relationship with his football career has matured. What once felt like life-or-death competition for roster spots has become something a bit more philosophical. It’s become a way for him to model determination and purpose for the next generation.
His coaching business has evolved from necessity into a genuine calling. Working with young specialists through his subscription-based mentoring program addresses gaps he experienced throughout his own development.
Rather than the traditional model of weekend lessons followed by a week of figuring things out alone, Miller offers constant access via text messages, FaceTime calls, film review, and guidance on everything from technique to mental preparation to recruiting.
The work fulfills him in ways that individual achievement never quite could. Each young punter he helps offers him a chance to compress the learning curve that took him years to navigate, to provide the mentorship he wished he'd had during his own journey through high school, college, and his early professional years.
Miller's faith also continues to anchor his perspective on the uncertainty that defines his career. He speaks often about God writing his story, about following a path that has never quite matched his own plans but has consistently led to unexpected opportunities.
"God is writing my story the way that he is to help younger guys write their next dream chapter," he said in a way that summarizes both his current mission and his peace with whatever comes next.
The question of whether to continue pursuing playing opportunities remains fluid, changing almost daily based on his physical condition, his family circumstances, and the demands of his coaching business.
Some mornings, watching his son sleep peacefully in the nursery that replaced his memorabilia room, Miller feels a deep-seated realization begin to set in — it's time to focus entirely on family and coaching. Other days, when his left foot strikes a football perfectly and sends it spiraling 60 yards with textbook hang time, retirement almost seems impossible.
"I feel like I truly have been [at peace]," Miller said. "I've said it a million different times based on the milestones."
Yet peace and persistence have learned to coexist in Miller's world. After a decade of redefining success at every turn, he has discovered that contentment doesn't require abandoning hope.
The man who once measured his worth entirely by NFL roster spots now finds meaning in the teenagers he mentors, the young punters whose recruiting processes he guides.
His legacy, whenever it's finally written, won't be found in NFL statistics or box scores. Instead, it will live in the dozens of specialists he has coached, the insight he has provided into the hidden machinery of professional football, and the proof that extraordinary careers can unfold entirely in the shadows.
Miller has spent over 10 years demonstrating that being needed but never wanted is its own form of success, that persistence itself can become a form of artistry.
"I'm also really damn qualified to be doing it," he reflected in a proclamation that captures both his confidence and his acceptance of circumstances beyond his control.
The left-footed punter who began this journey as a scared teenager afraid of getting hit has developed into something unprecedented in modern sports. He’s a career journeyman specialist whose value transcends traditional fan-perceived measurements.
He has become professional football's most persistent ghost, the man who proved that dreams can sustain themselves on hope and hard work long after conventional wisdom suggests they should die.
Miller represents something rare in professional sports — an athlete who has redefined personal success without abandoning the dream that originally motivated it.
On quiet mornings in San Diego, Miller still makes his way to local fields. His left foot still knows exactly how to strike a football, still sends it spiraling counterclockwise through the California air.
The ritual continues not because he must, but because he can. Because somewhere in America, an NFL team might face a left-footed punter this season and need someone to help its returners prepare for that backwards spin.
Because after 10 years, Miller has learned that showing up is sometimes the only victory that matters. The dream may never fully die, but it no longer needs to be fed by desperation.
It can survive on something more satisfying — the simple knowledge that he belongs wherever footballs need to be punted with precision, purpose, and that peculiar left-footed magic that makes him simultaneously essential and invisible.
Time for a change
Five weeks after our interview, Miller's phone rang with another familiar request.
The Chicago Bears needed help preparing for a left-footed opponent during the third week of preseason. Richard Hightower, Miller's former coordinator with the 49ers, wanted to bring him in for a workout.
Then came the logistics that have defined a decade of his professional life. The call came at 2 p.m. on a Wednesday for a 10 a.m. workout on Thursday. Could he be on a flight in 90 minutes? Miller was driving with his infant son, 45 minutes from the airport. The alternative was a red-eye connection through LAX, landing in Chicago at 6 a.m. for a workout four hours later.
For what he believes is only the second or third time in his career, Miller said no.
The decision represents his evolution from desperate specialist to a father with boundaries. Hightower was understanding, even transparent about the purpose, telling him that it wasn't a real evaluation, before insisting Chicago would try to fly him out later in the season for another look.
Meanwhile, the Jets were also in the market for left-footed help, preparing to face Corliss Waitman and the Pittsburgh Steelers in Week 1. Miller was in touch with the organization, but they ultimately brought in a younger specialist from closer to home.
The Jets’ special teams assistant was Kevin O'Dea, the same coach who had given Miller one of his first NFL tryouts with Tampa Bay nearly a decade earlier.
"It'd be cool to get back in front of [O’Dea] for kind of my potential farewell tour on the lefty circuit this year," Miller tells me, acknowledging what may be inevitable while maintaining the hope that has sustained him for 10 years.
For now, the left-footed dreamer keeps his phone charged and his body ready. Some stories never really end — they just spin counterclockwise into the uncertain future.