How his dad, the right mentality and a phone call led Thomas Fletcher to the Panthers

Long snapper Tom Fletcher was in a battle to make the Seattle Seahawks final roster and to prolong his NFL career. He was on his second team after the Oakland Raiders cut him the year before, and if it didn’t work out, the undrafted player who was a walk-on at San Diego State, was going to give up football and study to become a teacher.

“This is probably my last shot,” he told The Seattle Times, which wrote a story on his plight. “I’m married, so I have to start working.”

That was 1996. Fletcher’s tenure with the Seahawks was indeed short-lived. He is now senior vice president of marketing partnerships with the Phoenix Suns and Mercury, and long snapping, in turn, has become part of the family business.

Flash forward to 2021, when Thomas Fletcher was drafted in the sixth round by the Carolina Panthers. He was born just over two years after Fletcher spoke with The Times, and is now in the midst of his own battle to make an NFL roster. He is up against longtime and beloved Panthers long snapper J.J. Jansen and there is far from any guarantees.

Long snappers are not the most noticeable players on an NFL roster, rarely getting the attention that most of their teammates do. It wasn’t planned to become a shared activity in the Fletcher household, but Thomas has carved out a path for himself; from being listed as the No. 1 long snapper in his high school class to joining a relatively short list of long snappers drafted into the NFL. The biggest challenge, in making it in the NFL, still lies ahead.

“I would tell my dad (when I was younger), like, ‘Oh, I’m getting made fun of for (long snapping), getting made fun of this, that, whatever,’” Thomas Fletcher said. “He’s like, ‘just do it now and I promise you 10 or 15 years from now, no one’s going to be laughing.’”

Passing down the Thomas Fletcher name

Both Fletchers and Tom’s father, typically go by “Fletch,” by those who know them. But, if we’re getting into technicalities, Thomas Fletcher VII was drafted by the Panthers. The tradition in the Fletcher family is to name the first-born son Thomas Fletcher, giving him the middle name of the mother’s father, in this case, Thomas Robert Fletcher.

The decision was made early on to differentiate him slightly from his father and grandfather, who are both “Tom.”

“(My wife) Tamy was like, ‘Hey, I’ll go along with all Thomas thing, but he’s going by Thomas,” Tom said. “He’s not going to be Tommy, he’s not going to be Tom, or any of those things like everybody else. He’s going to be Thomas.”

When each Thomas Fletcher has turned 21, a diamond has been passed down to him. They can change the ring it is in if they like, but the diamond remains the same.

Long snapping wasn’t planned to be passed down as well. Both Fletchers were originally more interested in pursuing baseball before turning to football. Tom did not push long snapping on his son, but instead, he came to his father when he was about 10 and asked to learn.

“I had always said to him, ‘if you’re interested in it, if you want to learn it, I’m all about teaching you.’ And then really never kind of bothered him on it,” Tom said. “I think we were out at a park or field, kind of goofing around, or whatever it is, and he’s like, ‘hey, I think I’d like to learn it.”

“ ... It certainly was him raising the hand because if I pushed it on him, the last thing he would have wanted to do is just do it because I said to do it.”

In middle school, Thomas, now 22, decided to start getting serious about the position and stuck with it. He fell in love with football as a ball boy at Skyview High School in Vancouver, Washington, where his dad was a volunteer assistant coach. After Thomas’ sophomore year, he moved to Georgetown, Texas and then to Florida to attend IMG Academy, a boarding school known for training athletes. He quickly came to be ranked the best at his position in the country.

“Once I decided to truly dive into it, (my dad) was beyond helpful and took me to camps and took me on visits to different colleges and stuff like that,” Thomas said. “He was a very, very big factor in me doing it.”

What it takes to be a long snapper

Chris Rubio coaches long snappers around the country, holding camps and helping athletes get to Division I schools. The primary goal of a long snapper is to get the ball accurately to punters and holders in often big moments.

Rubio identified a few keys to be a successful long snapper: Mentality (how they handle pressure), accuracy, athleticism and size. Fletcher worked with Rubio — specialized camps and coaches were not around when his dad was learning the position — early in his high school career and thought he had potential right away.

“He always had that swagger. We always used to Snapplemore, he looked exactly like Macklemore when Macklemore was really big,” Rubio, of rubiolongsnapping.com, said.

“... He was great because the number one thing with the long snapper is mentality, and he was able to shrug that off/ laugh it off/just kind of fuel a fire inside of him. It just made him better and better and better, to where it was like, ‘OK, you guys made fun of me. That’s great. I’ll just shut you up with my snapping.’”

Rubio was a college long snapper at UCLA and actually played against Tom in college. Interest in specializing in long snapping has picked up, but for much of the NFL’s history, long snappers primarily played another position on the roster. The backup long snapper on the Seahawks roster when Tom was competing for a spot was Kevin Mawae, also the starting center.

Two national titles with Alabama

Now that long snapping has become a position of its own, it takes a certain type of athlete to want to fill that role, although the risk of head and other injuries is significantly decreased, which is part of the recent appeal.

They are only on the field for a small number of snaps per game, largely fans are not watching and if a big mistake is made, everyone notices.

Thomas started every game in four years at Alabama, including winning two national championships, finished perfectly on all of his snaps, per the school, and won the Patrick Mannelly Award in 2020, given annually to the best long snapper in the country. He’s described as confident and was someone who became a team leader with the Crimson Tide. He has the personality to succeed in business himself one day if he wants to.

All of that, however, still doesn’t come with much attention from the outside.

“It’s not my job. There are guys who are the staple of an organization, and part of their role is to be in the limelight,” Thomas said. “The foundation of this position is just to do your job ... That’s my role in and of itself. The attention is not what you do it for.”

A phone call from Matt Rhule

“ARE YOU SERIOUS!?”

The Panthers’ Twitter video of Thomas’ reaction to Matt Rhule telling him he’d been drafted to Carolina has over 2.1 million views. After playing for the Panthers staff at the Senior Bowl, he had hoped he would end up with the Panthers and thought Rhule was one of the multiple teams calling about signing him as an undrafted free agent after the draft. Instead, he was in disbelief to find out he had been drafted.

Tom was the one to record Thomas’ reaction and joked that he never did get credit for it on social media. But with the television paused to better hear whoever was on the phone, how did he know to record that call in particular?

“He got a call and it wasn’t his agent, it wasn’t coach Rhule’s cell phone number, any of those, it was a Charlotte number,” Tom said. “Then as I kind of heard the conversation start up a little bit, I’m like, ‘oh my gosh, I think he may have just got drafted.’ That’s why I started the video. This could be interesting and if not, I delete it.”

And now because of that phone call, things are that much more interesting for the Panthers specialists. Rhule believes in competition, even for Jansen, 35, who has been with the team since 2009 and has played in the second-most games by any player in franchise history (192). With no guaranteed money this year, the team could save $987,500 if the decision is made to move on from the veteran.

“J.J. has been nothing but fantastic for me,” Thomas said. “To get the opportunity to learn from somebody who has done it for as long as he has, and also just to be as smart of a human being as he is and know things as well as he knows it, I mean it’s a really, really golden opportunity for me as a young guy starting out.”

A full-circle moment, if you will. In his first NFL offseason, long snapper Thomas Fletcher is taking it one day at a time in his own battle for a roster spot, assisted by the support and experience of someone who has been there — his dad.