Super Bowl Sooners: James Winchester's NFL journey filled with unexpected twists

Two mentors fixed his body, then fixed his game, and Winchester has been a Kansas City Chiefs fixture ever since

James Winchester spent about year in the oil and gas industry. For a football rat, that was plenty.

He had tried to grow up and get a real job and become a responsible adult and all that, but he just couldn’t scratch the itch he had to play the game he loved.

Now he’s in Tampa, FL, with his Kansas City Chiefs teammates, and is hoping to come away with his second consecutive Super Bowl trophy.

“The road to this point,” Winchester told SI Sooners last summer, “honestly, it’s been just hard to comprehend.”

James Winchester  / Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

When the Chiefs meet the Buccaneers in Raymond James Stadium on Sunday night, Winchester will be the 14th former Oklahoma Sooner to play in two Super Bowls. Only three men — Ralph Neely (4), Randy Hughes (3) and Steve Sewell (3) played in more. With a win, he’ll be just the seventh Sooner with two Super Bowl titles.

But before Winchester could make his mark in the NFL, he had to fix two things: his weight and his hitch.

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Two experts in their respective fields made sure he got there.

First, Winchester — son of the late Mike Winchester, Barry Switzer’s punter in OU’s 1985 national championship team — had to give up his dream of playing wide receiver. It was nice while it lasted, but if he could barely get wideout snaps as a walk-on at OU, he probably wasn’t going to make a career of it in the National Football League.

But long snapping — he had a gift.

Winchester’s gift wasn’t just zipping the ball between his legs at a laser pace — although that’s a big part of it. No, what Winchester added to the position was the rare wide receiver speed.

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But he couldn’t quite break into an NFL job because of that hitch in his snap, and because he only weighed about 210 pounds.

For the first one, he went to Gary Zauner, the renowned Phoenix trainer who has put kickers, punters and now long snappers in the NFL Pro Bowl.

Zauner looked closely at Winchester’s snap, and he saw something that needed to be fixed.

James Winchester (41) works with the field goal unit this week :: Steve Sanders/Kansas City Chiefs via AP

“He moved his hands before he moved the ball,” Zauner told SI Sooners. “He went to Buffalo and they said, ‘Man, you snap good, we love you — but you gotta get rid of that hitch.’ So he came here.”

Zauner said the intense attention to detail addressed the one thing about Winchester’s form that NFL teams just couldn’t get past.

“If you play golf, it was kind of like Charles Barkley: they were trying to get rid of that interruption in his swing,” Zauner said. “Well, James wasn’t that bad, but he did have what we call a hitch. It definitely keys the defense to take off before the snap. To his credit, he worked hard, he got rid of it and he’s been there (since 2015).”

Zauner said he told Winchester to get serious and get registered for his free agent special teams combine, where Zauner says 26-28 NFL teams send their special teams coordinators every year to check out kickers, punters and snappers. He knew Winchester could snap, and he was confident he had a future in the NFL.

James Winchester / Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

“Most important guy in my kicking game is the long snapper,” Zauner said. “I guarantee you, any good punter or kicker would say the only reason they’re as good as they are is because of the guy snapping the ball.”

After Winchester kicked around in some minicamps and training camps, he went to Zauner for some one-on-one instruction to perfect his form.

But even before he could fix his hitch, Winchester had to fix his weight. There’s no place in the NFL for a 207-pound long snapper.

For that one, he went to Pete Martinelli, who was Switzer’s strength coach while Winchester’s dad played for the Sooners. Actually, Mike Winchester went to Martinelli and told him his son wanted to put on 30 pounds to snap in the NFL. Former Switzer assistant and OU head coach Gary Gibbs — then an assistant with the Chiefs — watched Winchester at the Chiefs’ mini-camp, then a few days later ran into him at Martinelli’s gym in Norman. Gibbs told Winchester to stop playing around as a wideout and get serious about long-snapping.

That meant putting on weight, which came via two methods.

“It’s all about eating,” Martinelli said. “And, you’ve got to recover.

James Winchester (left) / Jay Biggerstaff-USA TODAY Sports

“So you get a guy like James who’s naturally lean, what you have to do is make sure he’s getting enough calories and enough balance between his carbs and his fats. Usually, a guy like that falls short of getting enough fat in his diet in order to keep his calories up.

“So you increase his monounsaturated fats like avocados, olives, we use nuts a lot. And then that way, you can increase his fat intake so the muscle, once the fat comes in, it’s broken down and used for energy and it spares the muscle. Then the carbs — the simple carbs, the complex carbs — you use for energy for the workout. So it spares the protein for use in the muscle.

“And you train every other day. You don’t train every day. A lot of guys, when they’re trying to put on weight, these strength coaches think they’ve got to work ‘em to death. And that’s not the way to do it. You can’t do that. You’ve got to let that body recover. It takes 72 hours for a muscle to be completely recovered from a workout. So if you train every other day, you’re within that 48-hour, 72-hour window. You don’t train ‘em as hard that first day because your energy level’s not back. So it’s all about adjusting your training level to accommodate the muscle. And to accommodate the energy level.”

Martinelli said Winchester probably ate upwards of 4,000 calories a day — four large meals, one small meal and one or two protein shakes. That was in addition to Martinelli’s grueling weight training regimen. That pushed him from about 210 to about 245 in just under three months.

“It was like, you eat until you’re tired of eating, and then you eat some more, and drink a shake,” Winchester said. “It was miserable. I never want to do that again.”

Fixing his hitch and adding 30 pounds of muscle (he’s now 6-3, 240) put Winchester in the NFL, and he’s been there for six years now. Since 2015, he’s played in every Chiefs game — 96 in a row in the regular season, plus 11 more in the playoffs — and his snaps on both punts and placekicks are almost always perfect.

“Worst part is probably the fact that as a long snapper, you’re expected to be perfect, and when you’re not perfect, it sticks out like a sore thumb,” Winchester said. “That’s sometimes glaring. You can have a hundred great snaps and then one snap that’s not so great, or one thing that doesn’t line up quite right, and you know, you’re just about booed out of the stadium.”

Winchester has forced two fumbles, recovered two fumbles and has a dozen or so tackles. In all, he’s played 887 regular-season NFL snaps, plus 95 snaps in the postseason. His dream of being a receiver in the NFL didn’t pan out, but so what if he’s not catching touchdown passes from Patrick Mahomes? Winchester is beyond grateful for the niche he’s carved out for himself.

Winchester has one year left on a five-year contract extension he signed in 2017. In his career so far, he’s earned $4.45 million, according to Spotrac.

“Every year I’m able to play in the NFL is an absolute dream come true and a blessing,” he said. “But I would love to play into double-digit (years). That’s just the competitor in me and, knock on wood, as long as the Good Lord blesses me with good health and the ability to hang around and keep doing what I love, I’ll keep playing.

“I think, like a lot of snappers said in the past, in the NFL, I’ll snap until the wheels fall off. So why not? You love the game, and it’s a dream come true, so I’m gonna keep on going.”

“Give James all the credit in the world,” Martinelli said. “That kid, he never quit. And then, being in the right place at the right time, and he listened to what I told him he had to do. It all worked out for him.”

“It’s been fun,” Zauner said, “and I’m just happy as hell for James. He’s such a nice young man.”