Nick Sundberg was the Commanders’ long snapper from 2010-20, until he was cut and replaced by Camaron Cheeseman after the Commanders traded up to select Cheeseman in the sixth round of the 2021 Draft.
You might think because of that he’d have no love lost for Cheeseman, but it is a business, and as Sundberg told Grant & Danny when he called in to his old pals Tuesday, he feels for the struggling snapper, but doesn’t understand why Cheeseman changed his technique this year when what he was doing was working just fine.
“He made a bad decision…in my professional experience and in my opinion, as a long snapper, you tend to not get better at snapping when you get to your mid-20s,” Sundberg said. “You’ve developed your talents and you've become the best long snapper that you can be, and you get to the NFL and you just hold that for as long as you can. You do exactly what you've been doing forever and trust that it's gonna work out. I’ve met a couple of guys over the years who love to just change their grip every couple of weeks and I just don't get it, but some guys are really good athletes who can pull that off. I’m not, I’m a ‘get back to the basics’ type of guy and trust what got me here, and a lot of that is just confidence.”
Sundberg understands slumping, as he had a bad run in 2020 himself when he didn’t know his triceps was injured, but he also remembers that, lack of injury knowledge aside, the best thing to do to fix it was hope practice made perfect.
“One day with Tress (Way) and Coach Kaczor and (Dustin Hopkins), I just said, ‘listen, I want to snap another 200 balls, you just catch and feed and let me work through this,” Sundberg said. “Whatever this is, I gotta fight through the pain and tell myself mentally it doesn't matter that it hurts, just throw your ball. I’ve never been a velocity guy, but I threw the fastest football in the NFL for a long time, so I just put that in my mind to go back to throwing the ball fast; stop thinking about the pain, stop trying to put it where you wanna put it, just throw it and trust that your muscle memory is gonna work, and it did.”
Grant wondered if Cheeseman’s issues were simply a case of the yips at first, but it was a problem constantly until, almost 16 weeks into the season, he had to be replaced. Maybe so, but again, it’s mind over matter in that case.
“That is absolutely a thing, and any time you throw a ball that that doesn't turn out where you want it to be, you remember those,” Sundberg said. “It's really hard, but some of the best advice I was ever given from the guy that taught me how to snap, Ben Bernard, is that you have to have the memory of a goldfish: forget, forget, forget. Nothing matters that happened in the past, the only thing that matters is the next snap, so think about that and go back to doing what you know how to do. What you do next, and how you react to those bad ones, is what makes you a good pro.”