Commanders cut long snapper they traded up for

Earlier this season, as it became increasingly clear that Commanders long snapper Camaron Cheeseman was struggling, coach Ron Rivera took a nonchalant attitude toward the problem.

“It is a concern more than anything else,” Rivera said in September. “And so we’ll just continue to have Camaron snap until, unfortunately, something happens, then we’ll decide from there. But right now, we’re handling it, we’re putting the ball through the uprights, which is most important. And I believe it’s just something that he’s working out.”

Something finally happened. Not bad snaps, of which there have been plenty all year, but a close call to punter Tress Way, a fan-favorite player, after a Cheeseman snap bounced three times on its way to the punter, leading to a big hit on Sunday in a loss to the Rams. Way was evaluated for a concussion and returned to the game listed with a back injury.

On Monday, Cheeseman was informed by Washington he would be released.

Long snappers are perhaps the least-protected group in football, but Rivera may have had good reason to hope Cheeseman turned it around. Rivera gave up draft capital, trading up in the sixth round of the 2021 draft to select the long snapper as a future pillar of the team.

The decision was curious at the time — rarely are long snappers drafted, let alone traded up for, and Cheeseman wasn’t even the top long snapper on most analysts’ draft boards. He had taken the 2020 season off from playing at Michigan because he was not guaranteed a scholarship and there was uncertainty about whether the Big Ten would play during the pandemic.

In the NFL, specialists are often cut and find their way along the carousel to a new team, and Cheeseman is likely to get a training camp invite next year, but even he admitted Sunday in Los Angeles that it was surprising things went this far.

“I’ve been worried all year,” Cheeseman said of his job security. “Most places I wouldn’t be around still, so I’m taking every week as it is.”

Rivera said the long snapping on Sunday “wasn’t good enough, and we’re going to evaluate that.”

Cheeseman sounded as flummoxed as anybody else as to how things got this bad.

“You practice it so much, and you expect it to go that way, but sometimes it doesn’t, and no matter how hard you want to try to be perfect, it’s not always going to go that way,” he said. “I’m just honestly trying to get back to my old mentality, when I was smooth and felt like it was going the way I wanted to do it. It’s just a matter about getting the job done.”

The long snapper’s character has been lauded by teammates, including Way, but his Washington tenure will end as another symbol of poor personnel decisions under Rivera.