The upside-down life of the Tennessee Titans' All-Pro long-snapper

LONG-SNAPPING HAS been described as the most specialized, and most ignored, position in all of sports. And in the strange, upside-down world of the long-snapper, the better you are at your job, the more anonymous you become. Case in point: Although they are a critical component in punting, extra points and field goals in a league where field position and scoring is at an all-time premium (especially during the playoffs), long-snappers didn't have their own official spot on the All-Pro team until last year. That inaugural All-Pro honor went to the Tennessee Titans' Morgan Cox. After 11 years, four Pro Bowls and several historic field goals in Baltimore, the Tennessee native joined the Titans in 2021 as a free agent. Not that it upped his Q rating at all. «The motto with long-snapping is you want to go unnoticed, otherwise you're not doing your job correctly,» says Cox. «I want people to forget my name because I've done my job so well, the ball's just there and they just expect that it's just going to be there all the time. So I take pride in going unnoticed. I've always said that I could probably walk through the stadium concourse in my helmet and jersey and pads and everybody would be like, 'Why are you wearing number 46?'»

Still, few people in the history of the game have better insight into this weird but fascinating position and all the extreme mental and physical challenges that come with it. (For starters: they're, um, inverted.) Which is why, leading up to the No. 1-seeded Titans divisional-round playoff game against the Bengals, ESPN Daily sat down with Cox to learn, well, everything, about the strange art and science of long-snapping.

HAVING A MOMENT: Few of us had any clue about how uniquely skilled and valuable