How about a little love for the long snappers?
Challenger, 23, can’t keep up with routine of savvy starter, 39.
Newcomer Lucas Gravelle and veteran John Denney are drilling together, and it’s the younger guy who has trouble keeping up.
Lucas Gravelle is trying
DAVIE — to make the Dolphins roster at a position so far under the radar that when people on the street ask him where he plays, and he finds out they’re not avid fans, he doesn’t really have an answer.
Long snappers never get much love, which is too bad, because the two guys competing to han- dle those chores in Miami are as opposite as it gets.
Gravelle is the young guy, having just turned 23.
John Denney isn’t a young guy. He’s 39. As Denney was first snapping for the Dolphins, Gravelle was wrapping up elementary school in Niagara Falls and had
barely touched a football.
So when the two work out together, it shouldn’t be surprising that one guy has trouble keeping up.
Just not the guy you’d think. “Early in camp I figured out I can’t be trying to keep up with him,” Gravelle said.
For a while, he tried. Give the kid credit for that. Between all the huffing and puffing, Gravelle asked Denney how he does it, which was a bit like the rest of us wondering how anyone — long snapper or otherwise — can play 14 years in the NFL and never miss a game, a feat Denney has accomplished.
“I said, ‘Do you think you could have kept up with yourself now at 23?’ ” Gravelle said. “And he said, ‘No way.’ ”
Denney doesn’t believe he’s working out harder than he did when he was in Gravelle’s shoes. Smarter, yes. Gone are the days Denney tries to max out in the weight room. Sure, he still lifts, but he also does more cardio work, focusing on as little rest as possible between bursts, and he stretches more to prevent injuries.
“John’s an animal,” Gravelle said. “I mean, he’s 39 years old ... ”
Gravelle was 10 when Denney began playing 208 consecutive games, a club record. By the time Gravelle started taking football seriously, in high school, he was playing running back, linebacker
and some long snapper.
“Then I started thinking about it,” Gravelle said. “I’m a little short — 5-11 — and I didn’t think I’d ever make it as a linebacker. So I started focusing on snapping and it took off from there.”
In more ways than one. At the NFL combine, players are tested in things such as the three-cone drill and 40-yard dash, even though you won’t find many players run-
ning around cones on Sunday afternoons. Likewise, Gravelle, who attended TCU, has a claim to fame he’ll never flash in a real game: He has video of himself snapping a ball and sending it 38 yards, 5 inches downfield. That’s even better than the world record of 36-8 by Cincinnati Bengals long snapper Clark Harris, according to Guinness. (If you ever needed proof there’s a world record for everything, there it is.)
“I saw other people posting their long snaps, and I saw one of the snappers at the Pro Bowl, he broke the world record with the book actually and it was like 36-8,” Gravelle told MiamiDolphins. com. “So I was just going to try it out and it hit 38 and a half and thought it was pretty cool.”
Gravelle has more important things on his mind today than getting certified by Guinness.
“He’s a great kid,” Denney said. “I think he’s doing good. There’s a lot of good snappers out there and he’s, I think, serious about his craft and he works at it. He asks a lot of questions. He’s always trying to learn and always trying to get better.”
Gravelle figures he has had only a few bad snaps all training camp but knows the real tests begin Thursday night when the preseason opens against Tampa Bay.
Some summers, Denney has gone unchallenged. Some, not. If Gravelle can succeed where others have failed in unseating the incumbent, he knows he’ll have some explaining to do when he runs into people on the street.
“They ask me what posi- tion I play,” Gravelle said. “I say, ‘Well, do you know a lot about football?’ If they say no, I say, ‘Uh, well, you’re not going to know my position.’
“But if they ask, I say long snapper and they know what it is. A lot of people actually do respect it because it’s a specialty. If any position guy could do it, they would just keep them and have them snap. But they did that in the past and that’s when you lost games from a bad snap. So there’s a reason why they bring primary long snappers in.”