Packers’ New Snapper Has Need for Speed

Steven Wirtel, perhaps the fastest long snapper in NFL history, will make his NFL debut for the Green Bay Packers on Sunday at Kansas City.

GREEN BAY, Wis. – An incredibly fast player will be on the field for Sunday’s game between the Green Bay Packers and Kansas City Chiefs.

No, we’re not talking about the matchup between Chiefs receiver Tyreek Hill and Packers cornerback Eric Stokes. And we’re not talking about the return of Packers receiver Marquez Valdes-Scantling.

We are talking about long snapper Steven Wirtel making his NFL debut for Green Bay. He was promoted from the practice squad this week following the release of 2018 seventh-round pick Hunter Bradley.

At the 2020 Scouting Combine, Wirtel measured 6-foot-4 and 235 pounds and ran his 40 in 4.76 seconds. That was the fastest 40 by a long snapper in Combine history, though it's not a long list with 28 40-yard times recorded from 2000 through 2021.

It was a record he had been targeting.

“Going into that week, did a little research on it,” Wirtel said on Thursday. “I take pride in being a football player at the end of the day. I know my first job is to snap, block and then get down field. For me, I love to just get down there and ultimately just make plays. It something early on throughout the Combine training I felt really good running and just felt like it was something that I can do. You put your mind to it, you’d be surprised what you can achieve. So, yeah, it’s something I take a lot of good pride in and I’d like to showcase on the field.”

A native of Orland Park, Ill., he was a first-team all-state snapper at Mount Carmel High School. He also caught 25 passes for 290 yards and four touchdowns. Wirtel snapped in 51 games at Iowa State from 2016 through 2019, earning first-team all-Big 12 honors as a junior and senior. He recorded a career-high three tackles as a senior. He was invited to the Senior Bowl, where he cemented his status as one of the top prospects in the class.

“Really my whole career up until college, I was playing wide receiver and outside linebacker,” he said. “It was something I took great pride in, playing both ways in high school at a really good high school in Chicago. It was fun because, at the end of the day, I view myself as an athlete and a football player. I knew that as I got into college that long snapping would be the only thing that I’d be doing, but I used to kind of mess around with my college coach, (Matt) Campbell, and say maybe let me get a couple routes in practice or something like that because it can get a little boring just standing there off to the side.”

Wirtel’s older brother, John, snapped for Kansas and got a shot with the Chicago Bears in 2019.

“I would say he influenced me,” Steven Wirtel said. “Shoot, I think I started snapping around seventh grade and I think he started pretty early, too. It was kind of funny, back when we played grammar-school football, there were weight classes, so the guy on his team was over the weight limit so he got put up. And my dad, driving home one day, looked in the rearview mirror and said, ‘Shoot, why don’t we just try it with you.’ Took it and ran with it, and it’s funny because one of the best decisions I think that we ever made was doing that. Got to go to college and now we’re at this level. It’s funny, a lot of guys come up to me and are like, ‘Down the road I’m going to bring my kids to you and teach them how to snap and be a specialist.’”

Wirtel went undrafted in 2020 and spent his rookie season on the Detroit Lions’ practice squad. The Los Angeles Rams signed him in February and he lasted until Aug. 25. He spent part of his training camp snapping to punter Corey Bojorquez, who the Packers acquired in a trade on Aug. 31.

The moment Wirtel joined Green Bay, it seemed only a matter of time that a change would be made. That became even more clear when the Packers put him on their list of protected practice squad players each week, meaning he couldn’t be poached by another team.

On Sunday, his moment will arrive. His parents and brother will be among eight family members in attendance.

“It’s definitely going to be something where the butterflies will be there,” he said, “but if you don’t have the butterflies then you don’t care.”

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Packers-Chiefs X-Factors

To go along with the weekly Three Reasons to Worry story, here are two #Packers X-factors for today's game at the Chiefs.https://t.co/aNA31Y5v6P

— Bill Huber (@BillHuberNFL) November 7, 2021