Canadian kicker Lirim Hajrullahu is working out for the Washington Football Team on Tuesday, per sources.
Hajrullahu signed with the Dallas Cowboys in August, but he was waived prior to final training camp cuts. During Week 3 of the pre-season he made both of his extra point attempts and averaged 73.3 yards on kick-offs with two touchbacks.
In Week 2 of the regular season, Dallas brought him back on the practice squad for a week after Greg Zuerlein had a poor performance going 3-for-5 on field goals and 2-for-3 on extra points in the Cowboys season-opening loss to Tampa Bay. Injuries at other positions meant there wasn’t enough space to keep Hajrullahu any longer.
Most recently Hajrullahu played in The Spring League and set a record by hitting a 59-yard field goal for The Generals. He was playing in TSL in hopes of earning another NFL opportunity.
The Los Angeles Rams cut Hajrullahu at the end of training camp in August 2020. He signed with the Carolina Panthers in January, but was released in March. The Tennessee Titans and Jacksonville Jaguars worked him out in the off-season.
The Western University product played in all 18 regular season games with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in 2019, converting 47-of-55 field goal attempts (85.5 percent) and 26-of-28 single convert attempts (92.8 percent), while averaging 43.1 yards per punt on 106 attempts.
The five-foot-eleven, 205-pounder tied for first in the CFL in field goals made (47), third in scoring (162 points) and sixth in field goal percentage. Hajrullahu earned division all-star honours for the first time in Hamilton and second time in his career (2016 and 2019).
Born in Kosovo, Hajrullahu and his family fled the region when he was a nine-year-old as Serbian forces attacked their town. More than a million ethnic Albanians were displaced and 11,000 were killed in a war that lasted 18 months in the late 1990s.
The family ended up in a refugee camp in neighbouring Macedonia. The family bypassed a chance to immigrate to the U.S. and opted for Canada instead, ultimately settling in the St. Catharines area.
