Denney’s streak hard to snap
Dave Hyde: Dolphin’s 209 games are a lesson in hard work, luck.
DAVIE — Before becoming an actor, Harrison Ford was a cabinet installer who one day took a job at film director George Lucas’s home. That changed his life. Oprah Winfrey, at 17, said she aspired to be a broadcast journalist in a beauty contest where one of the judges owned a radio station. That changed her life.
John Denney was in eighth grade, playing his first year of football when the coach at West Lake Middle School in Broomfield, Colo., asked a simple question: “Who wants to snap the football? Come over here.”
A tire hung from a goalpost. Players lined up from 10 yards away. Denney, like the others, had never long-snapped before.
“I didn’t strike the center of the tire,’’ he said, “But I hit the tire. That got me the job. I was the best of the worst.”
Last Sunday, Denney snapped for punts and field goals in his 209th consecutive Dolphins game, a team record for longevity and the longest streak among active NFL players. It’s also a lesson in talent, perseverance, endurance, attention to detail and luck.
That’s right, luck. Denney, at 39, has been around enough to assign it a healthy role. It’s not the larger role of talent, of course. Dolphins special teams coach Darren Rizzi was asked out of 100 snaps how many of Denney’s are perfect.
“He’d grade an ‘A,’ Rizzi said. “Probably 90 of 100.”
Still, the daily role of luck could be seen by the end of last
Sunday, when a shoulder injury made him miss his first snap in 14 years. That puts Sunday’s 210th start at the New York Jets in question. Denney previously survived hand, elbow, shoulder and knee ligament injuries during his streak.
Denney’s personal streak is longer than that, too, and again involves some luck.
“When I went from eighth grade to high school, the guy who was snapping just graduated,’’ he said. “When I got to college, the guy snapping was a senior, and I was redshirted. When he graduated, there I was again. I always had the opportunity to be a snapper.”
Snapping was a side job for him. A hobby. Now there are long-snapper coaches and camps and players winning college scholarships for long-snapping. However, Denney was an offensive lineman in high school, and started 29 of his 32 games at Brigham Young as a defensive end. That brought an invite to Dolphins camp as an undrafted rookie hoping to make the defense. How’d he do?
“I became the long snapper,’’ he said.
Through the years he’s been to two Pro Bowls, recovered a few fumbles, but mainly understood his singular and repetitive role.
“My job is pretty simple,’’ he said. “There’s not a lot going on. I can’t run various routes. It’s snap the ball. It’s the same thing over and over and over.”
It’s the job no one thinks of until it goes missing like Sunday. Rookie tight end Durham Smythe long-snapped for the final punt after Denney’s injury. He was the fourth thought a month ago. Linebacker Mike Hull and tight end MarQueis Gray got hurt.
Now the Dolphins signed Lucas Gravelle to the practice squad in case Denney can’t play. A few weeks ago, Denney drove over to Gravelle’s hotel room to talk with him for a half hour after the rookie was cut.
That’s what he does all his career. That’s the good guy he’s been. He understands what’s at work.
“I won the lottery,’’ he said of
his career. “You’ve got to be in the right place at the right time. There’s a lot of kids out there who can snap the football. I happen to have that talent, too, and got my foot in the door at the right time,
And I’ve been here ever since.”
He thinks back to where it all started, that eighth-grade day when he snapped a football for the first time and hit the tire.
“That sparked an interest in me,’’ he said.
The only question now is if he makes it 210 consecutive games.