Former Arizona Wildcats Austin Hill and David Richards have a new home in the NFL with the LA Rams!
The Los Angeles Times reported Monday night that LA’s returning NFL Team signed former Arizona Wildcats WR’s Austin Hill AND David Richards as free agents. The Los Angeles Rams organization agreed to release their former Arizona quarterback Nick Foles and then signed two former Arizona wide receivers all in one week.
After being sidelined for the entire 2013 season due to tearing his ACL, Austin Hill came back from his injury for the 2014 season. As a senior he started 14 games, completing 49 receptions for 635 yards and four touchdowns. On top of those impressive stats, he earned All-Pac 12 Honorable Mention honors.
Austin Hill will always be remembered as the receiver who made that unbelievable catch, now called the ‘Hill Mary,’ to beat the Cal Bears on the final play of the game in 2014. The irony here is that the Cal quarterback Arizona beat that day is the Ram’s No. 1 draft pick Jared Goff.
Austin Hill entered the NFL draft after his 2014-15 senior season. Hill went undrafted but agreed to sign with the Seattle Seahawks. Unfortunately he wasn’t medically cleared by the team. He then turned his sights south a couple of hundred miles where the medical guidelines were a little different. Hill was able to sign a rookie free agent contract with the Oakland Raiders who waved receiver Milton Williams to open a spot for our Wildcat.
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Just two weeks later the Raiders dropped Austin in May 2015. Then, exactly two months later, the New York Jets picked him up after releasing their kicker Andrew Furney. The last team Hill played for was for the New England Patriots on their practice squad. We hope Austin has found his new home for good. He is tenacious and hasn’t given up when others would have.
David Richards had a fantastic senior year as a red-shirt freshman in a tumultuous season catching 43 passes for 548 yards and scoring six touchdowns. Overall during his college career as a Wildcat, he played in 48 games, starting in 25 of them, caught 110 passes for 1,205 yards and scored 11 touchdowns in total.
In May of this year, Richards agreed to sign with the Atlanta Falcons. As luck would have it, Richards was released and then signed with Scooby Wright‘s team the Cleveland Browns. A few weeks later, the Cleveland Browns announced that they placed Richards on waivers to create a spot for K Patrick Murray.
The odds of making the Browns were low as Richards faced a very deep class of rookie receivers which included five draft picks.
You have to feel for these athletes, you have to have a very thick skin to keep pushing forward. The bright side is that there are still opportunities, and they are still getting noticed.
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Time to wipe the slate clean for the both of them, as the Rams opened training camp days ago in Irvine, our Wildcats Richards and Hill will be joining the team. Let’s hope the outcome is different this time, hopefully being reunited will have some added benefit, and they both find a spot in Los Angeles.