Seahawks cut green beret long snapper; now let’s hope he gets legit shot
The Seattle Seahawks cut a long snapper on Tuesday, which normally would be the kind of training-camp move that gets buried on a busy agate page (newspapers, kids — look it up!) transactions page and immediately forgotten.
But the long snapper in question, Nate Boyer, just so happens to have a great story. He’s a former Green Beret and former Texas walk-on whose story got quite the traction leading up to the draft. If you watched any 10-minute stretch of draft weekend on NFL Network, it was a near-certainty you hear Boyer’s story.
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It was a great story — and worth telling. But the way Rich Eisen was basically begging for some team to draft Boyer, you knew it was something that was resonating in the Twitterspehere, and elsewhere.
But I never believed for a second that the Seahawks, who signed the undrafted free agent after he failed to be selected, intended to keep him for very long. Instead, the Seahawks — and this is my opinion, mind you — signed Boyer as a feel-good bit of legerdemain after the team faced a ton of criticism for using its top draft pick on the troubled Frank Clark, who was expelled from Michigan following a domestic-violence case.
It was the classic sleight of hand — look at the shiny object over here! — that teams love to employ when they’re trying to diffuse an ugly PR battle. One guy gets in trouble? Well, check out all the good this other guy we have is doing! Straight out of the Roger Goodell/league office playbook.
No one in the Seahawks organization would ever confirm my suspicions, of course, but it’s grounded in solid evidence. Few teams carry two long snappers on their 90-man rosters unless they have a battle there, and the Seahawks have one of the best at his job — Clint Gresham, whom the Seahawks signed to an extension earlier in the offseason.
Nothing against Boyer, but he just didn’t stand a chance to beat out Gresham.
If this is it for Boyer in the NFL, if his perfectly snapped extra point and field goal from the Seahawks’ first preseason game this past weekend is his only NFL moment, it wouldn’t be a bad story. No one figured he could get this far. But let’s hope that that if he does get a chance he at least will give him an honest crack at making a roster. He’s earned that privilege.
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Eric Edholm is a writer for Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Eric_Edholm
