It’s not a snap

NEWARK, Del. — Your bruised thighs and cramping fingers shriek as your body convulses and you launch another wobbly spiral between your legs toward Joe Spadafino, an instructor with the Ray Guy Kicking and Long Snapping Academy.

Fifteen yards hasn’t seemed so far since you graduated from college keg queues.

Both you and Spadafino turn to look at the newspaper photographer, who has been pressed into stopwatch duty.

“1.06 seconds,” she announces, barely muffling a snicker. “But that one kind of looked right.”

After 45 minutes of gradual improvement under the tutelage of the indulgent Spadafino, a man who would make Job look anxious, your punt snap times (from hike to punter’s hands) have hit a performance wall just above the 1.0-second barrier.

“That would make you an almost passable high school long snapper,” says Spadafino, who works approximately a dozen Ray Guy clinics across the country each year. “Most high school coaches look for snaps in the .9-[second] range, but many would take an extremely accurate guy at one [second] flat. That said, we haven’t got you in pads, put a 260-pound tackle in front of you and asked you to block or cover. Obviously, there’s a little more to it than just the exchange. But you’ll probably make a flag football coach back in Washington very happy.”

How’s that for the Rose Bowl of backhanded compliments?

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The moment that brought you to such a career nadir, hunched over with your head, hands and metaphorical tail between your legs on a muddy field in Delaware, occurred during the final seconds of a game between Clemson and Georgia Tech early last month. Needing little more than a pedestrian punt to salt away the remaining 18 seconds of the game, Clemson’s long snapper, Geoff Miller, dribbled a weak bouncer back to his punter. The Yellow Jackets snowed him under, taking over deep in Clemson territory. And an 11-yard touchdown pass later, Georgia Tech celebrated a miraculous 28-24 victory over the Tigers.

In an early season marred with special teams gaffes, most notably a spate of missed extra points, Miller’s inexcusable grounder provided the impetus for a little angst-driven research on the subject of long snappers.

The average NFL long snapper is 6-foot-3, weighs 255 pounds and doubles as a backup tight end or linebacker.

“You don’t see too many 280-pound guys, because you have to be able to get down the field in coverage,” says Spadafino, a former long snapper at Eastern Kentucky who recommends one or two snappers a camp to a talent-base (ProKicker.com) used by many college coaches. “In high school, you can pretty much get by on technique alone. But at the higher levels, you’ve got to be a pretty good athlete. You’ve got to be able to execute the snap and immediately get yourself in position to block. And on punts, you have to be able to get down the field and make a play. Coaches aren’t going to put themselves in a position where the return team is playing 11 on nine. You’ve already got a punter back there who isn’t likely to be a very proficient defender, so your snapper better be able to run and tackle.”

That said, few coaches risk playing their long snappers anywhere else on the field. Though the motion is similar to an inverted overhead pass (even your grip is the same), few players can master the combination of perfectly timed hip rock, thigh-bruising arm drive and thumbs-up release that produces a perfect snap. Trust us on this point.

“Once you find a guy that can do it, you don’t clown around and get him hurt doing something else,” Oklahoma’s Bob Stoops says. “I think that’s in one of the first chapters of Coaching 101. Long snappers are just too important to the continuity of your kicking game to risk them moonlighting as tight ends or linebackers or whatever.”

Despite that limited playing time, long snapping can be quite lucrative. Last season, the average NFL long snapper made $590,000. Before your laughable display in Delaware, that number seemed excessive for a group of guys asked to do nothing but fling the ball through their legs a dozen times a game. After all, nobody grows up with a poster of a long snapper adorning a bedroom wall. And most fans can’t even name the long snapper on their favorite team. Do you know who snaps for the Redskins (Ethan Albright) or the Terps (Jon Condo)?

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