Eastern Washington long snapper Cody Clements masters craft, will play in FCS National Bowl

A couple of months ago, as Eastern Washington’s football team was preparing to face the Cal Poly Mustangs in California, the infamous performance earlier that afternoon by Weber State long snapper Grant Sands was brought to Cody Clements’ attention.

Sands, in a game the Wildcats lost to Montana State 43-38, had botched four snaps to punter Jack Burgess, and a few EWU players mentioned this to their own snapper, Clements.

All those snaps had transpired before the (Eastern) game, and so everyone was coming up to me saying, ‘Did you see the Weber State snapper?’ ” Clements said this week.

“Yeah,” he replied. “But we’re about to play a game right now, and that’s not what I wanted to be thinking about.”

Any potential doubts and worries never came to pass, and Clements had, as usual, a clean game of snaps both on kicks and punts.

Rare, of course, is the name of a snapper mentioned. So long as he does his job well, players in Clements’ spot are rarely noticed.

But this weekend, Clements is getting noticed. In a good way.

Clements is in Daytona Beach, Florida, as one of two long snappers participating in the FCS National Bowl, an all-star game that gives Clements and others a chance to play in front of NFL and CFL scouts.

It is that chance to get in front of scouts – and also the chance to go out and just have fun playing football – that excites Clements.

“It’s special that I’m even in this opportunity,” Clements said Tuesday, two days before heading down to Florida. “When I first came to Cheney, I don’t think anybody expected me to be where I’m at today.”

Clements, a graduate of Richland High School, was one of Aaron Best’s first recruits after Best was named head coach heading into the 2017 football season.

After redshirting that fall and waiting his turn in 2018, Clements took over as long and short snapper in 2019 and held the positions through this most recent fall season.

“Like anything, it takes work,” Best said of long snapping, something he did during his four years playing at Eastern, from 1996 to 1999. Best also started 22 games at center.

“It takes perfecting craft. It takes understanding that your job may be every 15 minutes as opposed to every 15 plays,” Best said. “There’s a lot more mental things at that position, because you just don’t know. You’re at the mercy of not knowing when your number’s going to be called.”

Clements first got serious about snapping his junior year of high school, when he figured a 5-foot-10, 230-pound frame wasn’t going to get him many Division I offers as a lineman. Clements started going to camps and working with coaches to improve his skills.

Eastern noticed him, offered him a spot as a preferred walk-on, and Clements worked his way up to earning a full scholarship.

Clements estimated that during a given week of the offseason he snaps anywhere from 400 to 500 balls, plus all the work he does during the season. Over the course of just one game, Clements figured he snaps about 200 footballs.

“I think I certainly have well over 10,000 hours,” referring to the Malcolm Gladwell threshold of mastery discussed in his bestseller “Outliers”.

And in all those hours and years, Clements said he’s never sailed a ball over a punter’s head in a game.

For the longest time he was a perfectionist, Clements said. If a snap wasn’t right on his punter’s hip or had a wiggle to it, he would get down on himself.

As Best alluded to, snapping can be a stressful job.

“Everything’s kind of silent. You know all eyes are on you at that point, which is different from the center,” Best said. “That can be daunting at times.”

Clements said he has worked with a sports psychologist to help him be more neutral in his thinking and to not be so self-critical.

“Not every snap is going to be or feel perfect,” Clements said. “But from the outside eye, everyone will think I’ve had an absolutely perfect season.”

He and the other specialists, like punter Nick Kokich and kicker Seth Harrison, spent a lot of time together over the last few seasons, often hanging out after games at one of their apartments. There is a special bond among the special teams players, and there certainly is something unique about their routines during practices.

But Clements said he tried to get in on drills as much as he could. Quarterback Gunner Talkington, who also handled holder duties on extra points and field goals, said he remembered times over the years when the scout defense needed more players. Clements would go in and give the offense a good look, Talkington said; Clements even earned scout team player of the week once.

Clements is also proud of all his career tackles – five of them – and remembers each one clearly. His last came this year against Idaho; he also recorded one against Florida.

Best said getting Clements back for the last season was a big deal. As a 2017 high school graduate, Clements could have chosen to be done. Talkington, who was in the same class as Clements, was also happy he came back.

“He’s a hard-working kid, and if you ask him to do something, he’ll do it,” Talkington said. “With long snapping, you don’t hear about the player unless they are messing up, kind of like the Weber State snapper. You need a good snapper to execute those special teams. Those are a big part of the game.”

Clements said he is working toward opportunities to play at the professional level somewhere, and he plans to take part in Eastern’s pro day later this spring. He’s proud of being a snapper and eager to have the chance this weekend to continue to hone a craft he’s spent most of the last decade getting better and better at, snap by snap.

“I think what I loved about it (at first) is that it was the first thing I found I really could become great at,” Clements said. “Long snapping has turned into a big love of mine because of how well I’ve been able to perform at it. If I work hard enough, I can become good at that one thing.”