If anyone was to turn on their favorite college football show or podcast, there are a hand full of names from the Alabama Crimson Tide that you will hear being mentioned.
Mac Jones, Najee Harris, Dylan Moses, Patrick Surtain, Jaylen Waddle are a few high profile athletes who make the headlines and receive close to all the attention and praise. But there are members of every football team whose jobs aren’t rewarded with ESPN interviews or big flashy awards despite being extremely important.
One of those jobs is being a long snapper, and Thomas Fletcher takes great pride in his work.
“My job is not to go on the field and get recognition for what I do,” Fletcher said in a Zoom call on Monday. “And that’s perfectly fine. My role is to put the ball where it needs to be. If I can do that, then I’m doing my job well.”
The Georgetown, Texas native has been apart of the Crimson Tide program for four years now and has been an important piece to the special teams unit.
Throughout his career Fletcher has never had a bad snap whether it be on punts or field goals, the ball has always been on time and accurate.
But the part of his job which isn’t seen between the hashes are the conversations he has with kicker Will Reichard, and how he manages the other specialists when things are going great and when things are going against them.
“What is super important in being a specialist, and in being a football player in my opinion, is you can never get too high or too low,” Fletcher said. “If you make a 50-yard field goal, you can’t be thinking about a 50-yard field goal when you have to go in for a PAT. If you hit a PAT well or hit a PAT and don’t hit it well, you can’t think about that when you’re kicking the next kick.”
Fletcher’s philosophy is to approach each kick individually and evaluate on a case by case basis. No kick will be exactly the same and managing reactions are very important in this area of the game.
“Each kick will tell a story, and it needs to be its own play. That’s just what it is. And so if a guy hits a bad ball, it happens. If I snap a bad ball, it happens. If we kick a bad ball, that happens. That’s football. That’s life. It’s being human. The most important thing you can do is to realize you don’t get to play that play again.
“That play happens one time and it will only ever happen one time. The best thing you can do for yourself and for the team and to give us the best chance to win and everybody around you to have the best chance to be successful is to play the next play. Kick the next kick, snap the next snap, and just keep going forward, moving forward.
“That’s how we do it here.”
Fletcher’s impact has been noticeable this season as his snaps and leadership have aided Alabama to a perfect 8/8 on field-goal attempts this season. Although his accurate snaps won’t garner much recognition, Fletcher’s demeanor and rapport with his teammates will is something that won’t go unnoticed.
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Patrick Dowd is a Reporter for Touchdown Alabama Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter, via Pat_Dowd77
