Darren Bennett (born January 9, 1965 in Perth) is an Australian who had a modestly successful career in Australian Rules football, followed by a far more substantial career in American football as a punter. He currently plays for the NFL's Minnesota Vikings.

Bennett, who grew up in Perth, spent 12 years playing Aussie Rules at elite level, and spent time with the West Coast Eagles and Melbourne Demons. During his time playing Aussie Rules, he participated in an exhibition at SkyDome in Toronto; he was first exposed to American football during that trip. He married in 1994 and went on his honeymoon to California, where he contacted the coaching staff of the San Diego Chargers and asked for a tryout. He wound up impressing the Chargers sufficiently that he was placed on the team's practice squad for that season, although he did not play.

During the spring of 1995, the Chargers sent him to the Amsterdam Admirals of NFL Europe, where he led the league in net punting average and earned all-league honors. That fall, he became the Chargers' regular punter. In his rookie season, he finished second in the NFL in punting average and made the AFC Pro Bowl team. He went on to establish himself as arguably the best punter in the NFL for the rest of the 1990s. Despite only playing in the league for half of that decade, he was named as the punter on the NFL's All-Decade Team for the 1990s.

Bennett was named to another Pro Bowl team in 2000, and continued to be one of the league's leading punters into the 21st century. Going into the 2004 season, he had averaged 43.8 yards per punt, averaged 27 punts per season inside the 20-yard-line, and had only three blocked punts in his career (one of which happened when the Chargers had only 10 men on the field). As a former Aussie Rules player, and considerably larger than most specialist kickers in American football (6'5"/1.96 m, 235 lb/106.5 kg), he does not shy away from physical contact on special teams. In 2004, he signed as a free agent with the Vikings.

Bennett and his wife Rosemary divide their time between homes in the San Diego area and Melbourne. They have two sons, one of whom suffers from muscular dystrophy; Bennett is deeply involved with charities associated with that disease.

External links

• Official Minnesota Vikings profile