California in November 1993, where Bennett asked Chris Jones, his fitness coach at Melbourne to contact the coaching staff of the San Diego Chargers and asked for a tryout. While the coaches laughed at Bennett when the first snap hit him in the face, they liked his kicks and invited him to the 1994 minicamp. Bennett kicked during the 1994 preseason then spent the season with the Chargers' practice squad. 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 honours. 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 playing in the league for only half of that decade, he was named as the punter on the NFL's All-Decade Team for the 1990s. Bennett's initial 1995 contract with the Chargers was, while the NFL rookie minimum of $119,000 plus a $30,000 Pro Bowl bonus, much more than the salaries of Australian rules players. On 7 August 1999 Bennett returned home with his adoptive sport and took part in Australia's first American Bowl in Sydney's brand new Stadium Australia versus the Denver Broncos. Bennett was named to another Pro Bowl team in 2000, and continued to be one of the league's leading punters well 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 (two 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 did not shy away from physical contact on special teams. This willingness to hit, rare among kickers, was never more evident than when he knocked an opposing punt returner out cold in his rookie season. In 2004, after 144 games for the Chargers, he signed as a free agent with the Minnesota Vikings, where he spent one season until being injured in pre-season and then cut in September 2005. However, he was recalled by the team in December 2005,