Before LP we signed a free agent tight end from the Rams who was also a solid deep snapper. In one of the first games he was lost for the year due to an injury and we fell into deep snapping hell. Keeping the deep snapper healthy is another big reason not to have him play another position.
Once you have a good long snapper, a smart team keeps them at all costs. Practically all teams have a dedicated one. If they try to get cute, they get burned.
Dallas has been pretty fortunate. Dale Hellestrae to Jeff Robinson to eventually Ladouceur.
But when they tried to get cute by cutting Robinson to save $1M and instead went with Jon Condo who had a streak of issues.
"This is a little bit like the yips in golf," Parcells said. "He can do it. It's the pressure of the situation, I think, is starting to get to him. And then the more problems he has, the worse the situation got."
Interestingly enough Condo went on to earn two Pro Bowls thereafter.
It came a few weeks later in the most surprising of ways. Because of a scheduling quirk, the Cowboys had games in San Francisco and Oakland on consecutive weekends and decided to spend the days in-between practicing in nearby San Jose. During the trip, they released their snapper and started looking for a new one. A Dallas player who shared the same agent as Ladouceur alerted the agent who put in a call. An invitation was extended and Ladouceur drove that night to the team hotel. The next morning he stepped into a team van headed to practice only to find the team’s omnipotent coach Bill Parcells and owner Jerry Jones a row in front of him.
“I was a Cal guy, I had long, blond hair” Ladouceur recalls with a laugh.
“We know about you,” Parcells said to him that day.
And all Ladouceur could think was: “What have I gotten myself into?”
But he survived. He nailed his snaps in that first game and then the others that followed. After the season, the Cowboys gave him a one-year contract and then another and soon he was the player whose roster spot was never questioned. “It’s definitely been a blessing,” says Ladouceur. “Every day I think about Coach Parcells saying yes. I saw him a couple years ago at the hall of fame game and I thanked him”
Parcells gave way to Wade Phillips who gave way to Jason Garrett and still Ladouceur remained. There’s never a need for a good long snapper until you need him.
Moral of the story, get a good one. Pay them. And keep paying them as long as you can.
Try to develop one in camps and maybe keep tabs on them if your old guy eventually retires. But forcing competition and then going with the younger cheaper player may not be all that smart. But have one around, maybe bring back on a futures contract the following year if they are still around.
We have tried the last few years with Casey Kreiter (now with Denver) and Charley Hughlett (now with the Browns).
Teams are even drafting them now, the Patriots did in 2016 (Joe Carmona) and the Steelers this year (Colin Holba).
