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Former YSU long snapper Whitaker continues to pursue NFL career
By Joe Scalzo
BOARDMAN
On March 30, more than three years after Boardman’s Bryan Whitaker played his final college football game, Pat Whitaker found himself inside a Baltimore hotel hallway on a rainy morning, catching snaps from his son before a regional NFL combine.
“The housekeeper was looking at us like, ‘What are you doing?’”
She wasn’t the first person to ask that question.
Seven years earlier, Whitaker was a solid (but not spectacular) high school linebacker who earned honorable mention all-conference honors and whose only Division I offer was at Youngstown State as a long snapper, the football equivalent of a pinch-runner.
His Boardman teammate, Corey Linsley, looked like a NFL prospect. Whitaker (who was 6-foot-3, 210 pounds and had the nickname “Stix”) did not.
“He was a real tough kid and I thought he could play at Youngstown State,” former Boardman coach D.J. Ogilvie said. “I don’t think anybody ever said he could play in the NFL someday.”
Whitaker played two seasons under Jon Heacock, injured his ankle in 2010 (he needed reconstructive surgery) and missed spring practice under coach Eric Wolford. Soon after dressing for the opener at Penn State, Whitaker left the team. (“Me and the coach [Wolford] didn’t see eye-to-eye,” he said, shrugging. “That’s usually how it works with any college coaching changes. They want their own guys.”)
Whitaker had chances to transfer to some Division III schools, but discovered it would cost him about a year’s worth of credits. So he stayed at YSU, left school before getting his degree and dreamed of playing football again.
It’s a familiar story, with one difference: Whitaker developed into a 6-foot-4, 275-pound monster who could snap a football at a NFL level.
So in March 2013, he told his dad, “I want to give the NFL a shot.”
And that’s where this story gets fun.
Rare skill set
The NFL’s 32 teams are allowed to have 53 players on their active rosters which means there are about 1,700 jobs available at any given time. But only 32 of those jobs go to long snappers, who have less job security than Donald Sterling’s publicist.
“If you’re a wide receiver and you drop a pass, you’re still on the team,” Whitaker said. “But if you have a blocked field goal or a blocked punt off a bad snap, you could be cut the next day.”
Long snappers must combine speed and accuracy on their snaps, obviously, but they must also be strong enough to block defensive linemen and agile enough to run downfield to cover kicks.
They must also meet a couple benchmarks. A good punt snap will travel 13-15 yards in .75 seconds — Whitaker said his snap time is .65, “which is the fastest you’ll usually see” — and field goal snaps are about .25 seconds. Punters usually want to catch the ball on their kicking hip, whereas holders should get the ball about 12-18 inches off the ground. Very few humans can do all those things, which is why the best long snappers can carve out long, profitable careers in relative obscurity.
Whitaker and his father traveled to Baltimore in the winter of 2013 for a regional combine, where fringe prospects pay between $250-$300 to perform in front of NFL scouts.
“He thought he did pretty good, but we had no idea what to expect,” Pat said. “When nothing happened, he said, ‘Well, maybe this is it.’”
Whitaker decided to give it another shot this March, again in Baltimore. Although he didn’t think he performed as well this time, he soon got an email from the NFL inviting him to the super regional in Detroit on April 12. A week after that combine, he got a call from the Green Bay Packers inviting him to their rookie minicamp on May 16-17, where he worked alongside a fifth-round draft pick named Corey Linsley.
“I actually got a text from [former Boardman lineman] Alex Antonucci saying, ‘Hey, did you hear about Whitaker? He’s trying out for the Green Bay Packers,’” Ogilvie said. “My first thought was, ‘Wait, wasn’t he done with football a couple years ago? Is he kidding me? Is someone trying to bust my chops?’
“It’s like that movie with the Philadelphia Eagles guy, ‘Invincible.’ To have someone pursue his dream and actually get a tryout, wow. I respect the heck of the kid for sticking with it.”
Still trying
Alas, this story doesn’t have a happy ending. (Yet.) Whitaker remains unsigned. The Packers already have a good long snapper in Brett Goode, who was a four-year letterman at Arkansas, then spent two years in training camps trying (and failing) to get a roster spot. He was pouring a concrete driveway in 93-degree Arkansas heat when the Packers offered him a job as an injury replacement in 2008.
That’s not an unusual story. Rob Davis, the Packers’ director of player development, played at tiny Shippensburg (Pa.) University, bounced around training camps with the New York Jets (1993-94), Canadian Football League’s Baltimore Stallions (1995) and Kansas City Chiefs (1996) before signing with the Chicago Bears in 1996.
He played in all 16 games for the Bears, got released at the end of training camp in 1997 and signed with Green Bay at midseason. Ten weeks later, he was long-snapping in a Super Bowl XXXII loss to the Broncos. By the time he retired in March 2008, he had played in 167 straight games, the third-longest streak in Packers history.
“I chatted with him at lunch in Green Bay and he was talking about how it took him four years to get in the league,” Whitaker said. “He said, ‘Don’t give up. I snapped for 12 years, until I was 40 years old.’
“I got my foot in the door. I’m thankful just have been up there with that franchise.”
As he wants for another phone call, Whitaker is working at Max Athletic Training off Bev Road in Boardman. He plans to return to school at some point, but his main focus right now is on the NFL.
His father suggested going to the Canadian Football League or playing in Europe — “You’re 24 years old; you can get paid to play football and look at castles,” he said — but those leagues want long snappers to play other positions, too.
“I’m just hoping to get another opportunity and hopefully make the most of it, if not with the Packers, then someone else,” he said. “I’ve learned if you have a dream, you’ve got to protect that dream.
“If you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re halfway there already.”