In 2012, long snapper Connor Udelhoven walked into the Badgers locker room as an anonymous walk-on looking to impact the Wisconsin football team. Five years later as a redshirt senior, he is still just as anonymous, but his impact no longer goes unnoticed.
Last year when Miami Redhawks’ punt returner Kenny Young muffed a punt midway through the first quarter of what would be a 58-0 Badger win, Udelhoven recovered the fumble and promptly received a huge ovation from his teammates and the crowd. That, though, might be Udelhoven’s only moment in the sun as a Badger, and that’s okay with him. Long snapping is an anonymous position, yet one with the utmost importance. It’s a position that is much more complex than just throwing a long brown oblong ball between two legs. It takes a unique skill set to be a successful long snapper, and Udelhoven has quietly mastered his craft.
While all Udelhoven does is snap the football, the process of becoming an elite long snapper is not easier than becoming elite at another position.
From a physicality perspective, long snappers need to be strong enough to stop potential players from blocking either a field goal or a punt. But additionally long snappers need to be agile enough to snap the football and swiftly run down the field, evading any punt blockers in their prospective path.
Those are the obvious qualifications to be a long snapper, or any position frankly. The hardest part of being a long snapper is the mental discipline and focus that is needed to excel in high-pressure situations. Udelhoven started long snapping at the end of middle school when his coach needed to fill the position. Since then he’s worked to master both the physical and especially mental side of the position.
“One thing I guess I’ve always liked that I scan through every time I snap, is that we shouldn’t really know what’s going on in the game. Whether it’s a snap in the first quarter, they say no pressure or if it’s a snap for a game-winning field goal or last-second punt you just have to get off to win, that situation shouldn’t be going through your mind,” Udelhoven said. “Whether your last rep was the best snap of your life or it rolled on the ground, the biggest thing is just being able to mentally move to the next snap.”
That mindset, said James McGuire, a former Badger long snapper and high school teammate of Udelhoven’s, is one of the hardest things to master as a long snapper. To McGuire, while the hand-eye coordination, flexibility and agility of a long snapper is important, it is the consistency in both mentality and action that separates the good long snappers from the great.
“He’s always been real good,” McGuire said. “He was good when he came in. And from what I’ve seen since I’ve left, he’s been nothing short of great. I don’t think he’s had any issues. I don’t think I remember him ever making a mistake in a game. That speaks for itself.”
While nowadays there is a way to track and measure practically every aspect of a football game, there is no precise way to measure a long snap, and for a casual observer it is additionally very difficult to evaluate on the fly. It’s hard enough to diagnose in the moment if a snap is slightly too high or slightly too low, let alone why a snap rotates the way it does. That is why film study is so important for long snappers. The way they watch film, though, is unique.
Instead of watching the All-22 like most of his teammates to learn from his mistakes, Udelhoven seldom is able to gauge the specifics of a snap from just watching the normal game tape. Sometimes, he says, you can see the details of hand placement and ball rotation on film, but those times are few and far between.
“So for me if we get the film in the right spot, it’s really kind of valuable. If not I just check up on everything. With everything you just have to go back to the fundamentals,” Udelhoven said.
Those fundamentals are mastered in practice, where Udelhoven and his fellow long snappers are literally almost always under the microscope. Long snappers don’t snap for two and a half hours during practice. Instead, McGuire said, they do their work on the field and then study the tape. According to McGuire, often in practice there is an individual camera placed near the long snapper to get close-up shots. Through looking at the zoomed-in video, it becomes much easier to break down a good snap or what went wrong to cause an errant one.
Even though McGuire only snapped at UW with Udelhoven for two years, he witnessed first-hand Udelhoven’s devotion to improvement by constantly studying film.
“He works at it all the time,” McGuire said. “He’s always working on his form or watching film, just trying to get better.”
Right away as a redshirt freshman, Udelhoven showed that he had potential to be an elite collegiate long snapper. Coming out of spring practice in 2013, he actually won the short snapping job over McGuire.
“I don’t think he had any bad short snaps. He was hitting laces out every time, perfect and on the money,” McGuire said.
As a result, for his freshman and sophomore seasons Udelhoven only snapped on field goals, leaving the long-snapping duty on punts to McGuire. But since McGuire graduated in 2014, Udelhoven has handled both punt and field goal snapping duties. That’s more than 40 games that Udelhoven has had a major role in, and yet his mastery of both short and long snapping and their degree of difficulty has gone nearly unnoticed. He’s still just as anonymous as ever.
“I would say that long snapping is probably harder [than snapping under center],” sophomore center Michael Deiter said. “But they’re two completely different things. It’s not harder in that you have to do a bunch of footwork or anything, but you’ve got to snap it either six yards for PAT’s which is far and it’s got to be pinpoint, or it’s got to be 12 or 14 yards for punts. That’s a long way to sling a ball and it’s got to be accurate. I think there’s certainly more pressure in that.”
Deiter actually long snapped during his junior year of high school, but the current Badger center has rarely tried since then because with his 6-foot-6-inch, 320-pound frame, Deiter isn’t confident he could run down and cover a punt.
When Deiter or another lineman gets beaten by a pass rusher or when a receiver drops a pass, they all have time in-between plays to make an adjustment. On the punt unit for instance, no matter if a long snap is good or bad, Udelhoven has to sprint down the field and try to make a tackle.
Long snappers get minimal praise when they do their job well and become easy targets for criticism when they fail.
“I don’t think anybody is going to come up to you and say good game for just snapping, maybe my parents and some of my friends, but that’s about it,” McGuire said. “It’s part of the lunch pail attitude. You don’t really need recognition, you just do your job.”
McGuire was instrumental in helping Udelhoven understand that crucial mindset.
“He was helpful, and just taught all of us we have to be lunch pail guys,” Udelhoven said. “Just come in, do our work, put our head down and grab the hard hat and get going.”
Other positions might receive fame from catching touchdowns or getting a sack, but there really isn’t an equivalent for long snappers.
Yet that’s okay with Udelhoven. He recognizes that UW has a lot of guys who can make plays and do their jobs at elite levels.
James McGuire did have six tackles over the course of his four years in Madison. Connor Udelhoven, though, is still looking for that evasive first tackle to add to his stat-line mantlepiece. He does have one fumble recovery, which is something his predecessor never had.
But that’s it.
Udelhoven has only touched the football once during a live play. And yet, even though you can’t quantify Udelhoven’s impact, he has one of the most important roles on the team. Just don’t tell anybody about his success—he doesn’t need the attention, or want to try another position.
“I kind of just love the role of long snapping,” Udelhoven said. “It’s really been a fun spot because you know every rep you have is so valuable. You know for field goals, every time you’re out there points are on the line. Punts are awesome too. That’s what makes it just so much fun.”
