MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (WV News) — As surprising as Darius Stills’ being overlooked in the NFL draft last week is the fact that Kyle Poland has had his dream come true, being invited to the Houston Texans’ rookie rookie mini-camp to try out for the team as a long snapper.
“It was obviously always a long shot, but it was always my dream. Then getting the opportunity was such a blessing and it came out of nowhere. So, here we are,†he said as he made arrangements to head to Texas next Wednesday or Thursday.
The road there has been long and hard, certainly not a road oft taken to the NFL for the one-time Morgantown High offensive lineman and it began, shall we say with a phrase taken from an early American television show, “Father Knows Best.â€
Back in middle school, Steve Poland saw that his son was very much into football, Kyle says around sixth or seventh grade, his father offered him some advice.
“My dad had told me if I wanted to make it in college and play football in college, the way to do it would be to be a long snapper,†Poland said. “I was not very big. I was definitely an undersized football player in high school, especially being a center. Eveything worked out because I worked my butt off.â€
Whenever they could, the Polands — father and son — would work on long snapping, sort of a do-it-yourself, sort of a masculine version of Eliza Doolittle from “Pygmalionâ€.
He was not very big at the time and even when he was playing at MHS he was hardly what major college linemen have come to be in the modern era, but his father had laid out a path for him that he would help him travel.
“We spent days going out in the yard and working it out. He wasn’t a long snapper but he did everything he could to teach me what to do. We just kind of ran with it from that and it’s pretty crazy,†he said.
All of this, of course, gave Poland a different outlook on life. What else would you expect when you spend so much time bending over at the waist and looking back between your legs at the world?
“It’s different than other positions, for sure,†Poland said. “It’s a specialty, being a long snapper. You either really do good a itt or not. You really have to take the time to get to where you want to be. It’s not something you pick up in a day. It’s a cool specialty position.â€
The thing is, there isn’t a whole lot of competition for jobs in this field of endeavor and when a coach finds someone who can do it, he cherishes him.
So it was at WVU, first with Dana Holgorsen and then with Neal Brown.
Poland got to play football at WVU, but was a walk-on and a back up ... not exactly the guy they had in mind when they wrote the song “You gotta be a football hero to get along with the beautiful girls.â€
But he never got discouraged.
“I was a walk on until my fifth year,†he said. “I earned a scholarship, fortunately, in my fifth year when I got to play. That was a blessing for me and my family.â€
It also produced a wonderful moment in his life, being in a team meeting when Neal Brown said they had a video they wanted to show.
“First thing I saw was my dad,†Poland remembered.
Then came his family and Brown announcing he had been given a scholarship, which set off cheers from his teammates throughout the room.
He spent a good part of those first five years living at home, moving in with kicker Evan Staley after having been in school for a while.
He upgraded his living arrangement when he moved in with his wife and daughter, Riley, who was born in March.
His collegiate debut came last year in the opening game and you can imagine the nerves after four years of working toward it, buit the first snap was perfect, so was the kick ... but there was penalty and he had to do it all over again.
Now things were really rushing through his mind, but again he made a perfect snap and ran down to cover the kick and wound up being the man who downed it on the 1-yard line, a long snapper’s version of Amos Zereoue running 69-yarPds for a touchdown on his first carry as a Mountaineer.
He would later have one other highlight during the season, making a tackle on the sideline of a Texas Tech returner who was trying to break a long return.
“I was the contain guy on that play. I knew I couldn’t let him get outside of me or the play would have broken down,†he said. “Everybody was so excited.â€
Obviously, you don’t want to get to the point where the long snapper has to make the tackle, but if he has to, he better not miss.
“As a long snapper you don’t want anyone to know your name. If they know your name, it’s because you made a mistake,†he said.
“You never want to have a bad snap but it’s always in the back of your head. It’s something you work on every day so you know you won’t make that mistake and are confident in yourself.â€
He’s confident enough to feel as he leaves on this latest adventure that he can prove himself capable at the NFL level. Houston has Jon Weeks as its long-snapper, the team’s longest tenured player having signed in 2010 and a former Pro Bowler.
“My goal is to win the job,†he said. “That’s my goal, no matter what.â€
It’s a long-shot, of course, but then so has been everything about his football life to this point.
