The Patriots made a surprising decision at long snapper this offseason, first drafting Vanderbilt’s Julian Ashby, then cutting their longtime long snapper Joe Cardona, whom they had previously made the highest-paid long snapper in football, as well as a team captain.
Ashby’s Vanderbilt special teams coach, Jeff LePak, says the rare decision to draft a long snapper was was a wise move by New England. LePak said he heard from many NFL teams before the draft who were interested in Ashby, which does not normally happen with long snappers.
“When you’re working out for a third of the NFL [before the draft], you know you must be pretty good,” LePak told Mike Reiss of ESPN. “I knew that he was special and it was cool to see the guys in the NFL realize that as well.”
LePak says Ashby is as accurate as it gets with long snapping.
“Julian throws a really, really consistent ball,” he said. “It’s going to be a nice tight spiral and it also gets back to the punter very, very quickly, so that lowers our operation time to a point where your punter is catching it faster, so his transition to actually punting the ball gets off quicker, which gives the rush team less time to get there and try to block a punt. Julian’s accuracy makes it easy for the punter on his long snaps, and easy for the holder on the short snaps. We had a really good year last year field goal kicking and punting, and a lot of that was due to him. We have really good punters and kickers, but when they don’t have to worry about a bad snap or misplaced snap, it makes their job so much easier.”
Cardona has signed with the Dolphins, which means the Patriots will get two opportunities to see up close whether they upgraded at long snapper by drafting Ashby.
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