Giants rookie center John Michael Schmitz is a practitioner of the “dead snap,” in which the center puts one point of the football in the palm of his hand and snaps it to the quarterback end-over-end instead of in a spiral. Schmitz said after he was drafted that he’ll change his technique if Giants quarterback Daniel Jones wants him to. Jones says he’s fine with it.
“As long as it gets back to me,” Jones told Jordan Raanan of ESPN.
The dead snap is more common in college than in the NFL, and Schmitz did it as an All-American center at Minnesota. Jones has never taken a dead snap at any point in his football career, but he and Schmitz talked about it before Organized Team Activities, and Jones said through the early offseason practices there have been no problems.
“It’s been good,” Jones said. “Yeah, I’m good with it. He’s accurate.”
Jones gives Schmitz an overall high grade for their work together so far.
“He’s been great too. He’s been great,” Jones said. “He’s a smart guy. Been in here working hard. He’s on it every day, working to learn and understand what we’re doing in protections, what we’re doing in the run game. Obviously, this is more of a passing camp. So, a lot of that run stuff’s happening in meetings and then walkthroughs out here. But he’s doing a great job, and it’s been fun working with him.”
If the Giants find success with it, we may see more centers using the dead snap in the NFL.
