OSU football: Deep at deep snapper

You know the old saying, if you have two deep snappers, you really have no deep snappers? Oh, wait. That was quarterbacks. Not deep snappers.

Oklahoma State has two deep snappers, and Joe DeForest, the Cowboy assistant coach who has become something of a special teams savant, is considering using both. Sophomores Connor Sinko (Tulsa Cascia Hall) and Andrew Suter (Sugarland, Texas) both are capable, and DeForest said he would like to use both. One for punts, the other for place kicks. And DeForest claims to not care which does which. Sinko or Suter could snap on punts, with the other snapping on placements. And each other

“The more guys you get involved in the game, the better,” DeForest said. “Makes you a happier team, makes you a deeper team.”

This is a hidden nugget of coaching wisdom. Getting as many people involved as possible does indeed lead to contentment, from the locker room to the meeting rooms to the practice field. Getting as many people as possible a stake in the process pays huge dividends. Baseball guru Bill James has written about this, how managers who find ways to use as many players as possible often are rewarded with more stable clubhouses. No reason why that shouldn’t work in a college football organization, too.

DeForest also would like to do the same with kickers. Quinn Sharp punted and kicked off for OSU last season, and now is vying for Dan Bailey’s place-kicking job as well. But freshman Matt Green of Louisville, Ky., and walkon Bobby Stonebraker of Tuttle are contending, and DeForest made no bones that he would prefer Sharp not have all three jobs.

The primary reason is that DeForest believes a kicker who holds all three jobs can succumb to leg fatigue late in the game and mental fatigue in games. But a side benefit goes back to DeForest’s deep snapper theory; the more players playing, the better.