Yes, Camaron Cheeseman’s long snap struggles, and whatever comes of the situation the rest of this year, affects the whole team – as has been noted by Brian Mitchell, any long snap is either for points or field position.
Well, Way was nearly injured on a bad punt snap that may have been the straw that broke Cheeseman’s back Sunday, and Tress had this interesting account of it during Commanders media availability on Thursday, as heard on BMitch & Finlay:
“As the ball was coming back, two different thoughts went through my head. Immediately, most punters think, ‘hey, can I get a punt off,’” Way said. “In this case, one thought was, ‘I could be a legend and potentially run this,’ but at the same time, I looked and saw three guys and I hit the fetal position and then got smacked. And as I was laying there, I don’t know how many breaths you have physiologically in your body, but all of mine got knocked out at one point, and I couldn't breathe – and then the concussion doc was giving me a hard time, thinking I had a concussion because it took so long.
I was just trying to catch my breath and get up! And then once I was in the tent, and even on the field, I was just trying to tell the team docs and stuff to get someone to tell Cheese I was all right. My neck’s tight, my shoulder’s hurting, but I was okay – and my family was there too, so I was just like, ‘text my wife and tell them I'm okay.’ But there was a moment there where I was laying there collecting my thoughts, thinking, ‘holy smokes!’”
Way thought they would get a flag on the play the way he was hit, but it was a ‘tough chain of events’ – and had he been younger, maybe he’d have tried to take off?
“It happens very quick, but as I'm falling with the ball, I kind of turned to look up to see if I could pop up and just punt it and get even 10 yards out of it,” Way said. “If I got the first down, I’d be a legend, but I don’t know – if I'd have taken off, I might have busted hammies.”
So, what did Way say to Cheeseman after he found out on Monday that the Cheese had been cut?
“When Cheese got the news, I was like, ‘hey bud, like, let's go to lunch, and we can just talk,’ and we just had a three hour lunch of just chatting and things like that,” Way said. “It was tough because I look back and remember my third year, when I was thinking nothing felt natural. When you're a specialist and you just do the same thing every day, if you can't just call on just muscle memory and not think it's just a nightmare – like, even this year, I'll have some games where I'm trying to do too much or thinking, so just seeing him battle through that and having great practices and then trying to grind out through games. I hope that it just lights a fire in him in his next spot that he goes to.”
JP Finlay’s reaction to that?
“I thought his comments about going to lunch with Cheese were really important, just because it's so easy if you’re a fan of the team to say the guy's underperforming and it's frustrating, and people probably fire off some pretty hot takes,” Finlay said. “But there's a dude there that in some fashion is having his dream of being an NFL player dashed, and you try to reconcile the person with the performance, and recognize that it's different things.”