Photo by SJSU Athletics
By Matt Weiner (@MattWeiner20) — Reporter
Participating in the East-West Shrine Bowl was more than an All Star game for Spartans’ offensive lineman Jack Sndyer. It was an opportunity to dig his teeth into the NFL in a natural organic setting.
The week of practice that preceded the game on Feb. 3 was equally as important as the game itself. It gave draft hopefuls access to libraries of knowledge from NFL royalty and a hotbed for “how we met” stories between friends.
“It’s kind of rare, but we as a [East Team offensive linemen] group really blended together well,” said Snyder on Feb. 8. “Throughout this draft process we can all be there for each other.”
In a setting like this, the scoreboard doesn’t encompass whether or not it was a successful week. Snyder’s team nearly pulled off a 19-point comeback, but eventually lost 25-24. All that is background noise to everything that happened before those four quarters. It could be something strategic like advice on technique or innocuous as being a part of a group chat.
Nearly a week after the buzzer sounded off in Allegiant Stadium, Snyder still participates in a group chat daily with Oklahoma’s Tyrese Robinson, UConn’s Ryan Van Dnmark, Virginia Tech’s Brock Hoffman, and Boston College’s Alec Lindstrom.
It has the football sleep-away camp vibes of a summer training camp without the dark and stressful “Am I going to get cut today?” cloud lingering overhead. Players are allowed to make mistakes while having the space to laugh at themselves and each other.
“It wasn’t too big of a deal if someone didn’t have the perfect assignment the night after learning the playbook the night before,”Snyder said. “Someone goes the wrong way, you give them a little flack for it and jokingly ask what they’re doing.”
Busting teammates’ chops is one part of the experience, but at the end of the day this was fertile soil for developing a football-business acumen.
Snyder recalls that the “best advice” he received was “To ask the O-line coach, the GM, trainers and strength coaches what they need from you and start working with one or two of the veteran lineman … be able to get extra work and learn how to watch film.”
Kansas City Chiefs Hall of Famer Will Shields was a part of the coaching cavalry that helped Snyder make adjustments in technique. To the untrained eye, they could appear small, but to a purveyor of pancake blocks it could be the difference between a stop behind the line on 4th-and-goal or a game winning touchdown.
“He helped me out a ton with some small technique stuff like getting my hands right and fixing feet on pulls and pass runs.”
Snyder got introduced to a Las-Vegas buffet of football paradise for a week straight. Rather than heapings of cocktail-shrimp or prime rib, it was comradery and pearls of wisdom geared toward making a killing in the trenches.