The Journey, Precision of a Long Snapper
Redshirt senior Mason Hutton breaks down the journey to becoming a long snapper - and what goes into the details
Chris Kutz
It’s Inferno Day in the Caven-Williams Sports Complex.
The indoor practice facility’s temperature is cranked up and the humidity is deployed through the process of adding moisture into the confined air with improvised sprinklers (water hoses wrapped around ladders). All to mimic the conditions of playing in the south in August, something Boise State will do for the second year in a row to start a season when it takes on South Florida on Aug. 28 in Tampa, Fla. (5:30 pm ET/ESPN).
The first group of Broncos to breach the wall of humidity is the specialists at 8:38 a.m. A peculiar bunch, they are swallowed by a humidity percentage of 60% and temperature of 95 degrees upon entry.
Despite the change in conditions - it was a chamber-of-commerce morning and 65 degrees outside as they walked from their locker room to the indoor facility - it did not stop them from their measured routines. The “specs” - short for specialists and pronounced like the rec-specs worn by amateur basketball players before any current Broncos were born - shuffle into their spot and get ready for practice well before the rest of the team.
Mason Hutton, Boise State’s starting long snapper for the last three years going on four, begins his precise routine. He was recently named to the Mannelly Award Watch List, the award given to the nation’s top long snapper in college football.
Once he feels comfortable, he takes his role of service. Punters, kickers and holders await a long snapper’s activity. Their jobs are dependent on the long snapper. A step in a multi-step sequence, the snap sparks either satisfaction - or chaos. The duality of results based on one action is not for everyone.
Despite being a “specialist,” Hutton is an all-around athlete.
At Hillcrest High School in Riverside, Calif., was a three-sport athlete: football, basketball and swimming.
The 6-foot-5 psychology major started out his football career as a wide receiver. He played right tackle in high school and also gained experience at tight end, slot receiver, and on the hands team for kickoffs.
But he did not take up long snapping until his offensive line coach looked at him one day at a practice during his freshman year, tossed him a ball, showed him a little bit of the technique, saw him do a couple long snaps, and said ‘that’ll do. You’re our backup long snapper.’
Since the long snapper during his freshman year was a senior, he broke through as the starter during his sophomore campaign. Except the breakthrough was more of a proverbial face plant in a game against Kaiser High School.
“Up until this game my sophomore year, I had no idea what I was doing, no clue what I was doing, long snapping wise, just trying to get it back there,” said Hutton. “We were getting beat by 30 or 40 points. And on one of our punts, I ended up throwing it over our punter's head. My dad was mad, and he said, ‘You know what? We have no clue what we're doing here. If you're going to do this for your team, go all in on it. We need you to know what you're doing.”
Hutton’s father went to Facebook to find long snapping coaches, which is where he stumbled upon Matt Wigley. Wigley was in California at the time and ended up helping Hutton throughout the remainder of high school.
“(Wigley) made it a very fun environment,” said Hutton. “The coaching was really good and it was very precise, but we would also play these little games that involved us training our precision and our accuracy. One of the things that we incorporated (during my senior year) was we started talking about blocking, just because at the time, nobody really blocks in college football as a long snapper. But it's always good to have that, like in your back pocket if you need to. You almost want to kind of be a Swiss army knife.”
Hutton, along with other aspirational long snappers, worked the camp circuit to get scored, rated and noticed by the next level. He participated in the main long snapping camps run by Rubio and Kohl’s.
Kohl’s had him ranked 12th in his class. The description of Hutton read, “He is a giant of a person… Hutton is a snapper that has size and potential to play for a very long time.”
Hutton also used his Twitter account to get noticed. He would film his practice sessions and post them on his account. He was relentless in his pursuit to earn an opportunity in college football, consistently sharing and replying to posts to get the attention of recruiters.
Hutton’s first offer was during the summer going into his senior year. Nevada offered a preferred walk-on opportunity. As the season wore on, more offers started to come in and around signing day, Sacramento State offered. However, two to three days before signing day, Boise State special teams coordinator Stacy Collins - during his first stint on the Bronco coaching staff - gave Hutton a call.
“Coach Collins had actually called me, and it was like, ‘Hey, I want you here. We're gonna offer you. What do you think?’ At this point, I knew of Boise State, I knew the program, and I was psyched on that phone. Like, dude, hell yeah. Let's do this.”
Hutton committed to Boise State on Feb. 3, 2021 and enrolled at Boise State that summer.
After redshirting his freshman year in 2021, Hutton has long snapped for the Broncos in 42 straight games. During last season’s CFP season, he led all Mountain West long snappers with 133 snaps.
What goes into being a long snapper, though?
For Hutton, it is all about the details - and it all starts with the warm-up. Fifteen minutes after stepping foot into the indoor on a Sunday morning fall camp practice, Hutton starts his drills with fellow long snapper Hunter Higham around 8:53 a.m. The two throw the ball five times with their right hands over a 8-10 yard span before alternating between their right and left for the next four tosses.
After extending their distance to 15 yards, the two push the ball to each other, mimicking the long snapping motion and hand placement - just standing right side up.
Then, they long snap the ball back and forth 13 times at the punt distance before doing five warm up snaps at the length required for a field goal. He works between tempo snaps before speeding up and gradually incorporating chopping his feet.
“What I try to focus on there is what I want to feel during my snap,” said Hutton about his warm-up routine. “It's fairly similar to golf, in a sense, where guys are taking a practice swing. They're emphasizing the things that they want to feel when they're actually swinging at the ball.”
The technical aspects to Hutton’s snaps are important. His hand placement starts with his right hand gripping the football as a normal throw: fingers across the laces and thumb wrapped around the end of the ball. His left hand, though, is placed on top of the ball with the seam of the football splitting his fingers. His feet are stationed wider than his shoulders giving him a stable base. Once in place, he finds his stationary target, be it the holder on field goals or the punter.
“I tend to throw the ball a little bit higher than what I would initially hope for,” said Hutton. “So I'm usually on a punt looking mid-thigh on our punter, or on a field goal, the hand (of the holder) that's down, I tend to look at their wrist or lower forearm area. And I know and trust my skills, that I know where the ball is going to be when I eventually snap it.”
Most long snappers look where they want to throw it, like Hutton, and are called “look snappers.” There are others who are of the no-look variety. The breakdown between the styles is around 50-50 in terms of preference.
Snap speed and rotations are another important piece of being a long snapper. In high school, Hutton had a snap time of .8052019 of a second in 2019. A year later, his snap speed was down to .692019 of a second. Now it is around 0.67 of a second. For rotations on a field goal, he and the Boise State coaching staff determined he spins it 3.5 times before the football lands in the hands of the holder over the span of 1.2 seconds. This means, to get the laces just right in the hands of Boise State holder - and punter - Oscar Doyle, Doyle must kneel 7.75 yards away from Hutton. For comparison, when Higham snaps, the holder is 7.5 yards back.
One area where Hutton is an outlier compared to other long snappers: his height.
“It definitely provides some advantage,” said Hutton. “For example, with our blocking, if I'm having a block, I have longer arms, I can engage quicker. Like, there's a lot of fine details that it does provide an advantage. I want to say it would help with snap speed too, because there's more centripetal force.”
When it comes to blocking, Hutton is intentional with every action as well.
“On a punt, we have to have a good snap and when the ball is right around 9-10 yards away, I want to have my head up,” said Hutton. “I want to be able to see what's going on. I want to have at least one or two steps into the ground and before the punter’s even catching the ball, chances are you're going to be engaged with somebody.”
This offseason, Hutton was focused on improving his athleticism, from down-the-field speed to lower body fat and higher muscle mass. In between the time of workouts and team meetings in the summer, he would sneak in 20 minutes of cardio upstairs in the Broncos’ weight room.
“I wouldn't even drink my protein shake, because I would go and then run on the treadmill just to keep myself in shape,” said Hutton.
While his body started to tell him that was not the best move, the intention was about becoming more well-rounded. He is a redshirt senior this year and like his eyes on a long snap, he’s looking at his next target.
“Coming into college my first year, all I really wanted to do was just do my best here (at Boise State),” said Hutton. “(Playing in the NFL) wasn't really anything I was thinking about. But I would say, after my sophomore year is probably when it started to kind of click where I just finished up playing, starting for my second year, and I was like, ‘You know what? I believe that I could play at the next level.’ That belief really started to build into me. And from then on, it's just been a goal of mine to play (professionally).”
Hutton has proven himself on the field, but he has also proven to the Boise State coaching staff that he can be trusted.
“There's so many things he does well,” said Tyler Rausa, former Boise State kicker and current specialists assistant coach. “One, he's a great teammate. He brings guys with him. He's really taken a leadership role this year where we have, almost everybody is new inside the specialists room, and he's going to be the only returning starter. Two is that attention to detail and how he wants to be the best version of himself, and how he wants to push himself in order to be the best guy for you know what this Boise State Bronco team needs.”
On the Inferno Day in fall camp, Hutton snapped the ball more than 60 times over the course of the practice time. Quarterback Maddux Madsen, meanwhile, spun it to his targets 99 times.
The preciseness and routine to it all is critical. With so much riding on action, Hutton must focus on each snap, down to where he places fingers, his hands, and his feet. Even the slightest rotation in the wrist or alignment of his body can change the trajectory of the ball.
“I need to be at my best so that our punter, our holder, our kicker, can be at their best,” said Hutton. “It starts with me.”
