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JJ JANSEN TO BECOME GREATEST LONG-SNAPPER OF ALLTIME! - PantherFan007 - 10-16-2026
With this weekend, JJ Jansen gets a new title, the longest running Long-Snapper of all time in NFL History!
HOLY COW, what a LONG ARTICLE! I'm posting part of it, but the rest is at the link. Good stuff and worth the read, if you have half an hour or so to spare!
https://www.panthers.com/news/record-setter-jj-jansen-becomes-the-longest-serving-long-snapper-ever-this-weekend-panthers-history-trey-junkin
CHARLOTTE — This story could have ended up so many different ways.
He could have been a first baseman, or an analytics guy, or a general manager in baseball. Or maybe an engineer, or a broadcaster, because talking might be his second-greatest skill. He was very nearly an accountant in Dallas with a cool story to tell at parties. Certainly not a football player, not after his mom hid the permission slip to keep him from playing in high school in the first place.
But JJ Jansen did eventually convince her to let him play.
So he played. And played and played and played. So much longer than anyone in his life thought was possible. That's not an insult; that's just how rare this is, and he is.
Now this weekend, Panthers long snapper JJ Jansen will have a new title — the greatest long snapper of all time.
There aren't really cool stats for his position, like there are for all the rest of them, which he knows so well. There's just continued employment, and he's about to be the king of that category.
And he laughs when he thinks about it, because the first time he really remembers thinking about people actually doing this as a job, he saw the guy he's passing this weekend.
The first time JJ Jansen laid eyes on Trey Junkin, he thought he was a cautionary tale. Now, he's about to cross paths with the long snapper of his youth again, and keep going.
As we sit here today, Jansen and Junkin are tied for 24th on the NFL's all-time games played list with 281 appearances. There are no other long snappers ahead of them, just 10 kickers, four punters, three quarterbacks, two defensive ends, one wide receiver, an offensive lineman, a cornerback, and a tight end. That's it. They've already played more football than every running back, defensive tackle, linebacker, and safety to ever do this.
So Sunday, when Jansen takes his first snap against the Eagles, he will play his 282nd career game and become the longest-serving long snapper in NFL history — bending over and throwing a football between his legs more often than any person who has ever done this in exchange for money.
In a job where there are no real stats beyond games played — as long as you succeed, you get to stay — that's the ultimate distinction.
And three decades after a kid in Phoenix watched Junkin in Sun Devil Stadium, Jansen now recognizes what a distinction that is, in ways few others can.
"I always thought it was really funny that the punter and the long snapper would warm up on first down because back then the Cardinals were terrible," Jansen said. "And so I thought that they were just getting ready for the inevitable.
"I now know, like, we scored 32 points last game and I'm still getting ready on first down for punt. Like, that's just the process."
But that's also the key: falling in love with process. Because without being willing to do the ridiculous amount of rote work it takes to repeat a fine motor skill for more than 20 years (snapping is football accounting, really), JJ Jansen wouldn't be standing here today, at the top of his unusual and unlikely field.
"I think he never got bored with it," said his former kicker and mentor John Kasay, whose Panthers record for games played Jansen broke four years ago. "I think people can easily get bored with it, and he never has, and he's done it so long now. And the way the salaries are in the NFL now, it's like, you do it as long as you possibly can.
"I mean, he's all the things that you're looking for. And he never got bored with what he did. He has always tried to refine what he's doing, to make it as easy and reproducible as possible when you're in a pressure situation."
That's it, really. Finding your thing, and doing it over and over and over until you're the best at it. As simple as that.
Of course, there's way more that goes into it than that. The athleticism required to play in the NFL means you're rare in other ways, and it always seemed like Jansen had that.
His first coach saw it, in whatever sport he played.
Rick Fitzgerald was the first to spot it, to see something in Jansen that would put him in this weekend's spotlight.
He was a teacher and a coach at Rancho Solano School in Scottsdale, Arizona, when they started a sports program. Since these were elementary school kids, it was baseball and basketball, flag football, and soccer. And in all of them, JJ Jansen had a way of standing out.
"JJ was just the most sports-loving kid I had ever known, since myself," said Fitzgerald. "He was a very gifted athlete, but he didn't quite fit the role. He was like a bigger kid, but he played quarterback ,and he played point guard ,and he played pitcher or catcher. He played whatever the most skilled position was. But more than that, I think even if he wasn't good physically, his love for sports is like no kid, person, adult before or since I have ever met. He is just a, just a sports fanatic about just teams and culture and history and statistics and, and it doesn't matter what sport you're talking about. And he's just always had a pure love for just being involved."
But lots of kids love sports. Sports are cool. There had to have been a separating quality.
"What he has is just a level of intelligence and sports intelligence that is pretty unmatched," Fitzgerald continued. "He just understands inherently how a game operates and what you're trying to do and how to do it. He's mentally playing sports chess, and everyone else is playing checkers around him. Just the level of detail and thought and adjustments he makes just to make sure he snaps it correctly is staggering, but it's just how his mind always worked.
"Like in fifth-grade basketball, he's switching on defense before I'm even able to tell him. He was playing up as the point guard on the seventh-and-eighth-grade team because he was that good, and he was bringing the ball up, and he could isolate the weakness on the other team's defense and then just exploit it. Stuff you're trying to get your starting high school varsity point guard to do; he just understood it. In a middle school baseball game, if he was pitching or he was catching, one time through the lineup, and he would know already how to work the batter, it was mind-blowing, how fast and what at like an early age he could process like the subtleties of sports."
Fitzgerald has stayed in touch with Jansen over the years, and caught up with him at Super Bowl 50 in Santa Clara, Calif., and in all his conversations with his former student, it's not even a football memory he talked about the most.
"He said his greatest accomplishment was when they took batting practice at the AAA stadium there, and he was the only person to hit a home run," Fitzgerald laughed.
That tracks, at a lot of levels.
Baseball was the first love, and growing up in Arizona, he had access to a lot of it. He was a spring-training batboy for the Giants (and has the photo with Will Clark to prove it) and was always near a diamond. But it was mostly about being a part of a team, and part of that culture. He also showed a knack for that part of it.
"He understood he was good at sports, but he never acted like it," Fitzgerald said. "He always tried to include other people. We were a small private school, so if you wanted to play football, you got to play football. And there's a game, and we had a little kid out in the flat who, there's no way this kid should have been on a football team, right? Like we obviously just put him on because he wanted to play, and you could almost see him calculating, if I throw this to this kid, he's going to drop it, and we're going to turn the ball over on downs, but I'm going to throw it to him anyway because he's never gotten a chance to catch a ball before.
"He was that kid so early."
Of course, he was also Rick and Carla Jansen's only child, and as much as he loved sports, his mother wasn't sure about the football thing.
He didn't play in the area peewee leagues because he was on the wrong side of the weight-age curve as a kid.
"Part of my chubbier days," Jansen said with a laugh.
But once he got to Brophy High, there was a team, and he wanted to be on it because all of his buddies from the baseball team were.
His mom had a few reservations, beginning with safety. But also, she and her husband were going on vacation to Napa during football tryouts, and she didn't want to bother her sister with having to run him to practice while they were gone. So that permission slip never got signed.
"He was very upset because he obviously wanted to play," she recalled recently. "I don't know that he cared about playing football so much as playing with his friends from the baseball team."
But he found a way to be part of the team and build on his understanding of the game.
"So his freshman year, his math teacher needed a stat guy for the JV team, and I said, JJ, you should do that, because he loves stats and he loves math," she said. "And his math teacher says he never had a stat guy turn into a player; they were all the nerdy guys that didn't play sports.
"So yeah, it is a true story."
"Yeah, I was the nerd," JJ laughed.
During that year, he also took the first steps on the road that would lead him to his version of NFL glory.
His father (who passed away in 2023) had snapped in high school, so when JJ wasn't keeping stats, he started learning his craft in the backyard.
"I still remember we practiced in the same way every single time," JJ said. "We had like a square piece of grass that was probably 20 yards by 20 yards. I'd stand at one end in front of a tree that was right in the middle. My dad would stand at 15 yards away, and I would snap it.
"We'd have those legendary long nights where you're good, and then you stink, and then you're good, and you stink, and you're mad at yourself because you stink, so you yell at your dad, and he's yelling back at you and, there's this whole, you know, boys and their fathers moments."
But eventually, he started to get the hang of it, and by the time he turned 15, his mom eventually relented and let him try out for the JV team. The Brophy JVs already had a long snapper, though, a lineman named Neil Kennedy who would go on to play at Notre Dame.
"And he gave up that position so fast because he wanted nothing to do with being a long snapper," JJ said. "He did it because I'm sure he played Pop Warner since he was 5 years old. Dad was probably a coach. And so what do you do when your dad's a coach? He makes you the long snapper, right? That's both TJ Olsen and Luke Jansen. Like, if there's anybody in your family lineage that's ever long snapped, they make you a long snapper.
"But Neil gave that up. He's like, I don't want to do it. I'm done, you can have it. So I ran unopposed as a JV player."
MUCH more at this link
RE: JJ JANSEN TO BECOME GREATEST LONG-SNAPPER OF ALLTIME! - Hobbit99 - 10-16-2026
That article not withstanding, JJ is a true iron man. He is VERY good at what he does, always ready to support his team mates. He is also INCREDIBLY football-smart. He has more facts, figures, and knowledge readily available at his recall than any player I can remember. Not saying that there haven't been other incredibly history-smart players, but I can't remember one that was better.
I wonder if this will seal his acceptance into the HOF.?? Serious question....
Probably not... Those guys are all "real" football players, unlike poor JJ who isn't real important.... Ha.!!
Congratulations, JJ. You deserve any and all plaudits that you receive.
RE: JJ JANSEN TO BECOME GREATEST LONG-SNAPPER OF ALLTIME! - PantherFan007 - 10-18-2026
(10-16-2026, 11:04 AM)Hobbit99 Wrote: That article not withstanding, JJ is a true iron man. He is VERY good at what he does, always ready to support his team mates. He is also INCREDIBLY football-smart. He has more facts, figures, and knowledge readily available at his recall than any player I can remember. Not saying that there haven't been other incredibly history-smart players, but I can't remember one that was better.
I wonder if this will seal his acceptance into the HOF.?? Serious question....
Probably not... Those guys are all "real" football players, unlike poor JJ who isn't real important.... Ha.!!
Congratulations, JJ. You deserve any and all plaudits that you receive.
It's funny you should ask that, Hobbit (HOF reference). I was wondering the same thing the other day and wondered if there had been a long snapper in the HOF consideration?
Congratulations to him. And you're exactly right on all counts, he is a smart football player and an all around great human being.
RE: JJ JANSEN TO BECOME GREATEST LONG-SNAPPER OF ALLTIME! - PantherFan007 - 10-18-2026
Ah... AI answered my question for me:
AI Overview
No player has ever been inducted into or seriously considered for the Pro Football Hall of Fame solely as a long snapper.
Why Long Snappers Are Not in the Hall of Fame
• Lack of Statistics: The position has no traditional or measurable statistics (like tackles, yards, or touchdowns) to track or compare elite performance.
• Invisibility by Design: A long snapper does their job best when they go completely unnoticed; they generally only draw public attention if they make a bad snap.
• Special Teams Bias: The Pro Football Hall of Fame has historically undervalued special teams players. While placekickers (such as Jan Stenerud) and a punter have been inducted, dedicated specialists outside of those roles are virtually ignored.
• Overlapping Positions: Some Hall of Fame offensive linemen and centers performed long-snapping duties during their careers, but they were voted in based on their play at their primary positions rather than snapping the ball.