End of the Road for the Red Snapper?

Football is a numbers game at it's core, and is so at no more obvious a juncture than the annual September cuts.For the longest tenured Redskin, there's serious concern that his last day in B & G might be approaching. The Redskins are in an incredibly unique situation where they need to free up as many roster spots as they can so that they can protect their plethora of developmental lineman. This, in part, prompted the team to release T Jon Jansen. Now, it might cost the Redskins a special teams ace.Ethan "the Red Snapper" Albright has become one of the most reliable NFL long snappers in history, in fact, if he's ever missed a snap that led directly to a special teams snafu, I must not have been paying attention. He's the only Redskin who pitches a perfect season, and then goes out the next year and pitches another perfect season.Clearly, Albright is a valuable Redskin. But just how valuable? We all remember Trey Junkin's poor snap that cost the Giants a shot at a game winning field goal in the 2002 NFC Wild Card Game, and just last year, the Giants beat the Steelers when a punt attempt was snapped over the head of Mitch Berger, giving the Giants two points for a safety. The Redskins have traditionally avoided these problems by simply employing Albright.But I'm going to suggest in this article that his performance is probably replacable. I would start by arguing that the average professional long snapper probably missnaps fewer than a half field goal in a 16 game season and just a hair over one punt in a 16 game season. These are complete estimations. But if we assume their validity, we can calculate the value of having Albright on the team vs. having his roster spot.A 40 yd field goal attempt is worth about 1.4 points of expected value, given the probability of making the kick and the ensuing field position afterward. So a perfect long snapper could be assumed to be worth 0.5-0.8 points in FG position on FGs over the whole year (over average). Punts are a bit more tricky because they are less standardized. An average Hunter Smith punt in the last 4 years has traveled 44 yards in the air with 8-9 yards of return for a net field position advantage of 35 yards. There's climate factors I'm probably not considering here (like, indoors), but a snap over the head of the Punter would eliminate at least those 35 yards, and could add an additional two points if it goes out of the end zone. As a rough rule of thumb, every 15-20 yards of field position is worth 1 point (though these values change the closer you get to each end zone), so in my best estimation, a single botched punt snap is worth 1.5-2.3 points in a football game.Thus, this extremely pseudo-scientific analysis concludes that the difference between an "average" long-snapper and a "perfect" long snapper is between 2.0 and 3.1 points over the course of an NFL season. Hardly a fraction of a single win.On top of this, we have to consider that Albright's perfection might be a mirage. Just because he's gone so long without messing up a snap doesn't mean he's going to continue that way. He's a historically excellent snapper, but the Redskins can't fear a roster move simply because he might not mess up a single snap again this year.So what would be the benefit of not saving a spot on the 53-man roster for a snapping specialist? Well, according to the depth chart, C Will Montgomery would be the snapper. Will might make the team as a backup Center anyway, but putting him on dual responsibility saves a roster spot. It allows the Redskins to put a guy like Devin Clark or Edwin Williams on the 53-man roster and not subject themselves to giving up a line prospect via the practice squad.It's a unique situation the Redskins are in because the defense probably needs to use every one of it's allotted 25 spots this year, and the offense is exploring the possibility of keeping both 4 running backs and 6 wide receivers...we're basically looking at the standard 9 on the offensive line right now. Knowing that the team was willing to part with Jansen's veteran leadership to get a roster spot, it makes sense to assume that they would be willing to make another sacrifice to get a 10th lineman on the team.The other point at play here is that Albright takes up one of the 46 active roster spots every week: even if Montgomery or Williams makes the team at C, they might have to be made inactive, and the team has no one behind Rabach in case of an in-game injury. At long snapper, Will Montgomery not only economizes the 53 man roster, but also the game day active roster. Last year, one of the big complaints from fans about the week to week game-plan is that Chad Rinehart was always inactive from week to week. Well, when you have to keep a spot for your long snapper on the active roster, you can only afford to have seven lineman active. And in a rare case, that's going to mean that Justin Geisinger will be asked to pass protect against Terrell Suggs.In today's NFL, it's becoming increasingly more difficult to have super-specialists on your roster, but that's exactly who Ethan Albright is. He's only the greatest snapper Redskins fans have ever known. My only question is: should we be asking for much more out of our longsnapper than a guy like Ethan can offer?