SANTA CLARA, Calif. — For a franchise in need of distraction, the Australian Jarryd Hayne arrived just in time.
Hayne, a rugby star-turned-N.F.L. hopeful, came to Thursday’s news conference wearing a San Francisco 49ers cap, sweatshirt and shorts tagged with his assigned number, 38. An assembly of reporters, including some from Australia, asked him questions about the vagaries of ball shape, fair catches, open-field running and blocking schemes.
Gone was talk of arrests or retirements or coaching changes, topics dominating conversations about the 49ers in recent months. Hayne’s overnight transformation from foreign curiosity to roster contender gave negativism one of his much-admired stiff arms — a palm, in his parlance.
“I’m just worried about my game and doing whatever I can for the team,” he said, as if transported not from across the Pacific Ocean, but from public-relations heaven.
In his first-ever football game, San Francisco’s preseason opener against the Houston Texans on Saturday, Hayne returned kicks and played running back. He had 120 total yards, including 53 on one handoff. He added an entertaining 33-yard kickoff return from deep in the end zone and a pair of fearless punt returns. Against would-be tacklers, he used his palm to great effect.
The 49ers lost. No one seemed to notice. Hayne became a breakout star far from home and now seems the least surprised by it.
“I was always confident,” he said. “For me, I didn’t need a play to have that confidence.”
Hayne, 27, may be a fringe player in the N.F.L., but he is a National Rugby League star in Australia and a two-time Dally M medalist, an award comparable to most valuable player. In 2009, he was the Rugby League International Federation’s worldwide player of the year. (Rugby league differs from rugby union, generally with simpler rules and a faster pace.)
As a 6-foot-2-inch, 220-pound rugby league fullback, Hayne was considered a strong tackler on the last line of defense, a speedy and shifty threat to break through to the open field, and a sure-handed recipient of the sport’s high kicks, known as bombs. His rugby exploits have made him the subject of highlight compilations.
“He’s a Rugby League Superman!” a television announcer shouted during a Hayne burst.
“Superstar, superhuman,” went another call as Hayne sprinted through and around opponents. “Call him what you like. The speed of a bullet!”
Last October, in a letter to the “Blue and Gold Army,” the fan base of the Parramatta Eels, he announced his intention of playing in the N.F.L. He was in line to become the highest-paid National Rugby League player, likely to earn more than $1 million a year, but gambled on a sport he had never played.
“It’s always been a dream of mine to play in the N.F.L., and at my age, this is my one and only chance at having a crack at playing there,” he wrote.
He ran a 4.53 40-yard dash for N.F.L. scouts in December and signed with the 49ers in March. He has a three-year contract reportedly worth about $1.5 million, with only about $100,000 of it guaranteed if he does not make the final roster.
His odds appeared to be unlikely at best a week ago. Now, he has the Bay Area and a continent across the ocean cheering him on. San Francisco coaches have done their best to play down expectations — “It’s the first preseason game — it’s not like we’re playing Week 8,” the special teams coach Thomas McGaughey said — but find Hayne a scintillating talent.
“He can play in space,” Coach Jim Tomsula said after Saturday’s game, presumably meaning in the open field, not the outer atmosphere. “He’s a premier athlete in the world in space.”
McGaughey called Hayne “fearless” and said he had “great lateral quickness.” Both characteristics, he said, are found in the best returners and runners.
“He’s a great talent,” McGaughey said. “And you want talented guys on your roster.”
There are no No. 38 jerseys with Hayne’s name on the back for sale — yet. After all, he is still low enough on the roster to share the number with a low-rung defensive player, safety Dontae Johnson.
But when the 49ers play the Dallas Cowboys at Levi’s Stadium on Sunday, Hayne will be a big attraction and a welcome distraction.
No N.F.L. team has collapsed out of contention like the 49ers over the past year. They won 36 regular-season games between 2011 and 2013 under Jim Harbaugh, losing a Super Bowl and two conference championship games. They opened a new stadium in 2014 and began the season 7-4.
But off-field turmoil, including arrests of players and the mysterious fissure between Harbaugh and team management, subverted the franchise’s momentum. The 49ers stumbled to 8-8, missed the playoffs, and Harbaugh left and became coach at the University of Michigan, his alma mater.
The 49ers replaced him with Tomsula, the team’s longtime defensive line coach. Linebackers Patrick Willis and Chris Borland and the starting offensive tackle Anthony Davis unexpectedly retired. Running back Frank Gore and receiver Michael Crabtree were among key players who moved to other teams.
Outside linebacker Aldon Smith was released earlier this month after one too many arrests, the latest a third allegation of drunken driving. This week, receiver Jerome Simpson was suspended for six weeks for violating the N.F.L.’s substance-abuse policy.
The 49ers, like someone unwittingly dropped through a trap door, fell from enviable contender to pitiable pile-up. Few give them a chance to make the playoffs this year.
Enter Hayne, fitting in so well that he is not immune to off-field foibles, either. In July, Hayne wrote on Twitter: “Jesus wanted to help people but was killed by his own people.” A day later, he wrote: “The Jews were the people who took him to the Romans n forced them to give the order because they couldn’t.”
The posts were quickly criticized as anti-Semitic and historically inaccurate.
Hayne deleted them and apologized. “I have come to understand how my words were hurtful to the Jewish community,” he wrote, in part. “I have and will always accept people of all faiths. I encourage my fans around the world to do the same.”
Should he make San Francisco’s 53-man roster, or find a spot in the N.F.L. elsewhere this season, it will be a remarkable and audacious intercontinental success story — one of the best athletes in the world in one team sport quitting in his prime to play a different team sport in a different country.
There is little precedent. The Australian Hayden Smith found a temporary home with the Jets in 2012, playing five games and catching one pass as a tight end. He now plays for U.S.A. Rugby’s national team. The former Arizona State tight end Chris Coyle traded his chance at the N.F.L. for rugby in Australia.
“I don’t know how many Jarryd Haynes are over there in that rugby league,” McGaughey said. “But if there are, they might want to think about coming over.”
Hayne has what the Eels called a “lifetime agreement” with the team, meaning he can return to play at any time. It was the last thing on his mind, because his mind is absorbing what it takes to make the N.F.L. besides physical talent.
“The way I run routes, to the way I handle the ball, picking up blitzes,” he said. “To me, there’s a whole bunch of things that I need to get used to and get better at.”
And then he was escorted out of the room to do just that.
