The first week of the regular season featured two significant injuries to long snappers as both Washington and Oakland lost their long snappers to injury.
Those circumstances led to special teams coordinator Jerry Rosburg being asked about his backup snapper, whose identity remains a mystery. The Ravens won’t disclose who would replace long snapper Morgan Cox in the event of an injury.
“It’s something that we always work on, but it certainly gets your attention,” Rosburg said. “[Wednesday], we had a few more reps than we normally probably would have, because it brings it to mind. But you always have that in mind; you have to have a backup plan, so to speak. You hope it never happens.”
As rare as it is to lose your long snapper to injury in the middle of a game, the Ravens nearly experienced that exact scenario late in the 2010 season when Cox went down with an injury against the Browns in Week 16. However, Cox finished the game before being placed on season-ending injured reserve the following week.
Rosburg hopes not to deal with a similar situation any time soon.
“As you recall, we had a situation at Cleveland a couple of years ago when Morgan blew his ACL in the first half and played the rest of the game with that, which is unheard of – just a courageous effort,” Rosburg said. “I recall on the sideline our backup snapper – who is no longer on our team, who will remain nameless – I was talking to him about snapping about getting warmed up and he’s saying, ‘No, he’s fine. He’s fine.’ It brought back some memories.”
For what it’s worth, former Ravens running back Willis McGahee was seen practicing long snaps several times during open training camp practices in Westminster in the summers of 2009 and 2010.
But the current backup long snapper will apparently be ready — even if we won’t know who it is until the time comes.
Too much of a good thing
Enjoying one of the best home-field advantages in the NFL, the Ravens won their 11th straight regular-season game at M&T Bank Stadium Monday night and own 19 wins in their last 20 games in Baltimore.
Watching their first Monday night home game in five years, more than 71,000 fans made it difficult to hear for Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton and the Cincinnati offense throughout the evening. However, the crowd noise also carried over to when the Ravens were on offense as Flacco tried to operate from the no-huddle offense.
Cameron offered a message to the home crowd while speaking to reporters on Thursday, but the coordinator acknowledged the excessive crowd noise provided an opportunity for the Ravens offense to prepare for its first road game.
“We do need to get our crowd to understand to get a little quieter at home. I’m going to let Joe [Flacco] handle that,” said Cameron while laughing. “Don’t get me in that one. It’s a good problem to have. We had some crowd noise issues the other night at home. So, we’ll need to improve our communication on the road, obviously.”
The Ravens play at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia for the first time since 2004 when they lost 15-10 as former Philadelphia wide receiver Terrell Owens caught a touchdown pass to rub salt in the wounds of the team he refused to play for several months earlier.
