A Quick Guide To Coaching LS Protection

While most of college football uses a spread punt formation which sees snappers snap and release downfield, there is still something to be said for a long snapper who knows how to protect post snap.

The long snapping ranking camps haven’t helped either. While it takes some talent and skill to snap a 15 yard ball into a simulated net at questionable snap speeds, there’s no pads, there’s no protection work, and there’s not even any release downfield work. It is possible to be very good at “camp” snapping while not being very good at all at real-in-game-snapping.

I can see why snap and go is preferable: you just worry about snapping. Snapping is already enough of a head ache for high school and college coaches that adding in another wrinkle like protection doesn’t usually make sense.

But, for overload situations, backed up situations or if you’d like to switch to a pro style punt formation knowing you have a snapper who can protect is a luxury.

So, let’s take it from right after the snap is delivered:

• Hips - Drop them low. The finishing position of a long snap has a snapper’s hips high and in bad leverage to take on a defender.

• Footwork - Small, no more than 6 inch power steps to start your kick back as you drop your hips. Always aim to have one foot in the ground.

• Hands - Keep forearms and hands inside your chest, ready to deliver a blow. Don’t overextend them prematurely. Then you have no leverage to knock a defender offline.

• Shoulders - Stay as square as you can as long as you can. Rarely will a snapper be one-on-one with a rusher (except in an overload situation or all out block situation) so most of the protection may come in the form of a double team with the punt guard. Help out your interior guys, but don’t overcommit by turning your shoulders too much, inadvertently creating an A gap seam.

Even more simply:

• Hips: Low

• Steps: Small

• Hands: Inside

• Body: Square

Check out current Commanders Long Snapper, Tyler Ott, as a guide for what a polished kick back into protection post snap should generally look like:

I’d have your snapper walk through this motion gradually speeding up from 1/3 speed post snap to full speed.

A progression might be:

• Straight drop back - no assigned defender just looking for late rushers, or chipping with interior guys.

• Rip/Liz drop back - Practice kicking back to the right or left depending on the line protection call.

• Rip/Liz drop back with a twist - Do the same drill as before, but now simulate a late twisting rusher across the LS’s face to opposite side of Rip/Liz call.

Your first and primary job is to deliver the ball to the punter, but if you’d like to really boost your value to your punt unit, pick up how to protect post snap (it’ll also 10x your recruitability as a high school prospect, and definitely as a college to pro prospect)

Another way to think of this: To initially learn how to protect, you’re going to need to treat it as something separate from snapping. But, the idea eventually, is to treat the snap, protection and release all as one single motion.

Simple, not easy.

BC