How a Newcastle rugby player taught the NFL’s best player how to hit even harder

It’s fair to say it’s been a crazy week for Billy Coffey.

The former Newcastle rugby player turned defence coach opened up his Instagram feed at one point, and it was mind-blowing.

“I was scrolling through and for two minutes, every single post was me,” Coffey said. “I just went, ‘Oh geez, what have I done here?’”

Coffey went well and truly viral this week – globally – when a clip of him teaching NFL megastar Myles Garrett how to tackle spun around the internet.

As the reigning NFL defensive player of the year, and with one of the most imposing physiques in American sport, Garrett could already hit people hard.

But vision of a nuggety Australian showing Garrett the technique to really smash people – and then himself getting smashed by Garrett in the same July training session – was suddenly everywhere.

With the NFL season starting this week, and Garrett playing for the LA Rams at the MCG on Friday, the total views were north of 100m, and shared by accounts with a cumulative audience of well over 100m as well, including 33m followers on the official NFL Instagram account alone.

“It’s definitely been a crazy week,” Coffey said. “I have an interview with the Los Angeles Times after this, and then Good Morning LA. It’s full on.”

The Novocastrian was thrust into the spotlight after his work in coaching Aussie league and union players how to “whack” got noticed online, and led to several trips to the US.

Coffey was a well-known rugby figure in the Hunter for a long time, playing centre and wing for the Merewether and Wanderers clubs over 22 seasons. At the same time, he grew a strength and conditioning business, and opened a gym popular with many NRL and union players, and UFC fighters.

While briefly working for the RunIt League, Coffey buried himself in study of the biomechanics and principles of dominant – but safe – tackling and contact work. He left RunIt amid concerns about safety, but continued to teach the art of big hitting, and videos online quickly spread around Australia and the world.

“I released one post that got 18 million views, and I went from 90,000 followers to 250k almost overnight,” Coffey said. “After that I got a message from Micah McFadden, who plays for the New York Giants, and I flew to Tampa to work with him.”

Coffey also worked with Danny Stuntsman (New Orleans Saints), Segun Olubi (Las Vegas Raiders) and Bobby Okereke (Carolina Panthers), and was invited into to work with the UCLA college program too. Somewhere along the way, Garrett’s agent reached out, wanting to book in.

“I wrote back, ‘No worries, here’s my number’,” Coffey said. “I had no idea who Myles Garrett is. I called up Bobby Okereke, I said, ‘Myles Garrett, he any good?’ Bobby goes, ‘Just the best in the league’.”

Garrett, standing at a monstrous 194cm and 123kg, was voted the NFL’s best player by his peers in the 2025 after a dominant season for Cleveland Browns. The 30-year-old broke the all-time NFL record for most sacks in a season (23) and won his second DPOTY award.

”If the aliens came to earth and said, ‘Let me see the best human that you have’, you go with Myles Garrett,” Patriots cornerback Christian Gonzalez said recently.

After nine seasons with the Browns, Garrett was traded to the LA Rams in the off-season on a $288m contract.

Coffey was working at UCLA when he told them about his impending work with Garrett, “and they were like, ‘OK, we’ll shut the whole facility down’.“

“I said to him, ‘Mate, am I teaching Michael Jackson some dance moves?’ Like, what am I going to teach you?” Coffey said.

Coffey worked with Garrett on biomechanical tweaks like foot and hip placement, and as the guinea pig running in with a pad, the Aussie felt the full effects, over and over, in the week-long tuition.

“I have not been hit that hard in my whole life,” Coffey said. “He is hungry. I left there with not one bit of knowledge in my head, he just drew it all out of me and he just absorbs it,” Coffey said.

The vision of Garrett nailing Coffey took a few weeks to get picked up, but this week a few re-posts went very viral.

“It’s a bit of a strange feeling for me with the whole world kind of seeing it,” Coffey said. “I’m not an influencer. I’m just a coach, and I just love coaching.”

Coffey had already been approached to work with more NFL and college football teams, and messaged by many players. And that pace has only picked this week after the Garrett vision went crazy. He has even been asked to work with offensive coaches.

Coffey has recently sold his gym and is planning to spend two to three months in the States each year, and to use the rest to tour around Australia coaching juniors.

He’ll be in Melbourne on Friday to watch Garrett and the Rams take on the 49ers.

Coffey laughs when you mention one comment on social media: “This dude teaching Myles Garrett to hit even harder needs to be charged as an accessory to murder.”

“I can tell you right now, he’s the best athlete in the world,” Coffey said.

“He’s got one significant force factor that we’re working to tighten up. If he tightens that up, yeah, I’ll hand myself in.”

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