The Green Bay Packers have 12 selections in the upcoming 2018 NFL Draft. With so many picks — including four compensatory selections between rounds four and six plus an additional seventh-round pick added via trade — general manager Brian Gutekunst has plenty of flexibility on day three.
He can package some picks together for a move up, he can take fliers on athletic but raw players at key positions, or he could do something entirely different: draft a player at a specialist position. The latter seems like a strong possibility this year, given this report from Yahoo! Sports’ Eric Edholm:
Two teams that have done a lot of work on draft's top long snapper, Oregon's Tanner Carew:#Bears & #Packers
— Eric Edholm (@Eric_Edholm) March 22, 2018
There has been a LS drafted each of the past 3 years, and I think Carew is picked late
Yes, we (and Eric) are suggesting that the Packers might draft a long-snapper this season.
The 2017 season was a chaotic one at that position in Green Bay. The Packers rotated through a trio of long-snappers at different points throughout the offseason and the regular season, as Taybor Pepper, Derek Hart, and Brett Goode each had multiple stints on the roster. After replacing Hart midway through training camp, Goode both started and ended the regular season as the guy, with a short time away during the year due to an injury settlement. However, none of these players remain under contract, since Goode is an unrestricted free agent and the team elected not to issue an exclusive-rights free agent tender to Pepper. Instead, the team’s one long snapper on the roster is first-year pro Zach Triner from Assumption College, who ended the 2017 season on the practice squad.
Perhaps this means that the Packers will consider drafting Carew, who snapped for four years at the University of Oregon. He was the only snapper invited to this year’s NFL Combine, and he also participated in the Senior Bowl. There’s really not much to say about scouting a long-snapper other than noting that he made five tackles in his college career and has consistently been rated as one of the best snappers going back to high school (according to NFL.com).
In looking back at the Packers’ draft history since Ron Wolf took over before the 1992 selection meeting, the team has not chosen a long-snapper in the draft. That could change in a few weeks.
(Editor’s note: this article initially indicated that the Packers did not have a single long snapper on the roster at present. We apologize for the error and for overlooking Zach Triner.)