The Packers signed Jesse Schmitt, a street free agent snapper from Purdue, who was previously in mini-camp with Green Bay on a tryout basis. Schmitt was signed to compete with Rick Lovato and participated in practice last night where he promptly broke his hand.
Schmitt is expected to be out 4-6 weeks and may reach an injury settlement with the club.
There were two snapping transactions yesterday, as the Vikings gave Kevin McDermott a new four year contract that runs until the end of the 2020 season. McDermott would have become an unrestricted free agent after this season.
In addition, the Saints brought back Chris Highland as training camp competition for Justin Drescher. Highland has been signed by the Saints a few times since last season.
As most aspiring professional long snappers know, it is very rare to have an open job in the NFL and even more unusual to have two rookies compete for it. However, that is the exact scenario facing the Arizona Cardinals following the retirement of veteran Mike Leach after last season.
Matthew Bain of AZ Central Sports wrote an interesting story the other day about the competition between rookies Danny Dillon and Kameron Canaday. Bain describes how special teams coach Amos Jones, who coached Leach and, before that, Greg Warren from his time with the Steelers, was in an unusual position of having to find a replacement.
Given the blessing of General Manager Steve Keim to “find the guys you like”, Jones worked out about 12 long snappers but were focused on small school snappers Dillon from Campbell University and Canaday from Portland State. Both were signed as undrafted free agents and are roommates now competing for the job.
Of note in the story is that, during his search, Jones focused on the few remaining college teams that still use the punt protection schemes employed in the NFL requiring that the snapper block and protect before covering downfield. Jones felt that finding a guy who knew how to protect was critical since it would minimize the amount of things the new snapper had to learn.
In the effort to replace client Clint Gresham, who was released in the off-season, the Seahawks appear to have settled on rookie Nolan Frese. The Seahawks waived Drew Ferris today making Frese the only snapper in camp. Frese snapped at the University of Houston and was signed in late June.
The STATS FCS Preseason All-America Team was announced today and each of the three teams have a long snapper included. Joshua Appel (Indiana State) is on the first team after landing on the second team last year. Joseph Smith (Charleston Southern) is the second team snapper, while James Fisher (North Dakota State) repeats as the third team snapper.
Last year’s first team snapper, Kameron Canaday (Portland State), is currently with the Arizona Cardinals.
Followers of the Longsnap twitter account (@longsnapcom) will be familiar with the magic of Eagles long snapper Jon Dorenbos. For the last few weeks, Dorenbos has been creating a stir with his magic tricks performed on the NBC show America’s Got Talent.
Each week, I have retweeted the video of his tricks, but Dorenbos has now reached the semifinals stage of the show and deserves his own blog post. Dorenbos is now eligible for the million dollar prize and has also brought new attention to the long snapping position.
Best of luck to Jon as he continues to be a professional in two very unique ways.
With training camps opening this week, there have been two snapping transactions. Veteran Christian Yount was released by the Patriots and rookie Nathan Theus waived by the Broncos.
Yount was originally signed after there was some concern about Joe Cardona’s ability to play in light of his Navy military commitment. With that issue resolved, Yount was deemed expendable. Yount joins Danny Aiken, Thomas Gafford and clients Brett Goode and Clint Gresham as available and experienced veteran long snappers.
With Theus gone in Denver, it appears client Casey Kreiter, who was in camp with the Cowboys the past two training camps, will be the Broncos snapper this season.
The NFL continues to tinker with the kicking game and this preseason will be no different. The NFL will experiment with computer chips in kicking balls this preseason to determine how far inside the uprights successful field goals and extra points are.
The goal is to examine whether reducing the distance between the uprights, which is currently set at 18 feet, 6 inches, is necessary. If the preseason test goes well, the NFL will implement the chip during the regular season, but only in Thursday night games.
In announcing these changes, Dean Blandino, the NFL’s senior vice president of officiating, noted that the specialization of the kicking game, “from long snapper to holder to kicker” has caused the NFL to look at making the kick more difficult.
Any snapper can relate to the desire to be perfect. The MMQB recently published a three-part series by Dylan Howlett on the quest for NFL kickers to be perfect at something that cannot be perfected.
Howlett profiles a number of kickers, including former Chargers kicker Nate Kaeding, that also includes comments from his former snapper, David Binn. The author suggests that the kicking position demands “flawlessness” more than any other position in professional sports, and, like the long snapping role, there are “only 32 openings in the world for the privilege, or pressure.”
Once again this year, noted football writer Phil Steele has provided rankings of the top long snappers in college. Phil Steele’s 2016 College Football Preview hit stores this week and, as he has done in the past, Steele includes long snappers on each of his four All-American teams. Cole Mazza of Alabama is the First Team snapper, followed by Zach Smith (USC), Scott Daly (Notre Dame) and Wes Farnsworth (Nevada).
As an added bonus this year, Steele also ranks the top four snappers in each Division One conference. Those snappers will be highlighted when Longsnap.com debuts its exclusive compilation of each Division One long snapper this September.
Longsnap.com 