Phantoms Of The Kick Off: Capturing NFL Special Teamers That Never Made It At Their Actual Position (Part 2 of 5)
Welcome to Part 2 of 5 of Phantoms Of The Kickoff. We continue our quest today in identifying the most unforgetable NFL football players since the advent of snap count data was publicized in 2012. And by unforgetable, I mean never known in the first place to have been forgotten despite playing before our very noses as career special teamers. Yesterday we shined some light on Dee Virgin, the now promiscuous confirmed one time defense played haver to complement his 478 special teams plays.
Today, we focus on those who never even got that one chance. Players like Jordan Glasgow - who's full career non-special team stats are listed in his NFL.com player page above. Not only did Glasgow top Virgin's 478 total special teams plays with 495, but he failed to ever record a SINGLE play at his natural position of linebacker. In fact, the only linebacking he ever did on defense was standing back behind the line on every play. And he was great at it. While you might think you could stand back behind a line, he could stand behind the line backer.
Selected in the 6th round by the Colts, Glasgow spent just two season in the league in 2020 and 2021 but made a recorded history record of most special teams plays of any player to never even get one chance at his actual position. Here's a list of all 27 players with at least 100 special teams plays which in which Glasgow is the true alpha of the NFL betas. I'm realizing now of all the sad graphs I made, this might actually be the saddest sports stat graph of all time.
Shout out to the phantom who just missed the cutoff with 99 special teams snaps. In true phantom form, he remains unrecognized even in this blog about the unrecognized. And you'll never know who it is.
Let's play a game. Let's take a shot for every player we recognize on the list above. You can play too if you're at work because we are all going to stay incredibly sober. Just look at these name. I wouldn't blame you one bit if you thought I just make them all up. I'm starting to wonder myself. So many of them look like either a first or last name of an actual player filled in with a fake other name.
- Keenan Allen Michael Clayton
- D'Juan Hines Ward
- Sterling Sharpe Weatherford
- Michael Jerome Ford
- Marshall Darren McFadden
- Jeremy Johnny Cash (OK went outside of football for this one)
- Josh John Ross
Honestly, I could go on.
- DeDe Marcus Lattimore
- Tramain Josh Jacobs
- Dorian Melissa Etheridge (reaching here)
- De-Marcus Dick Van Dyke
- Darnell Mooney Bishop Sankey
To put things in full perspective for our guy today though. What's his name? That's right, Jordan Glasgow, 495 snaps is roughly eight games worth of snaps for a given team. This means he's played the equivalent of a half-season of football, but in a world in which every play of the game was a kickoff. As bizarre as a game as that sounds, that's literally all this guy knew in the NFL.
Curios if any Colts fans out there remember this guy. He made 15 tackles on special teams and it was just a few years ago so that's 15 chances to have your name called out by the TV broadcast booth.
TV Broadcast Booth: "And a nice tackler there by… (looks at player notes sheet) … number uhh…..59!"
I can't help but think about how sad it is that a guy who worked his ass off on special teams would never even get a single chance in a blowout game or whatever to put something on tape for his actual position. I know Jim Irsay has a history of keeping a white line between Glas but this is as cruel as it gets.
So just as I did with Dee Virgin yesterday, I'd like to advocate Glasgow getting an actual chance to play a down in the NFL as a linebacker. We need to raise awareness for these phantoms used and abused as non-player characters.
With two phantoms of the kickoff down, we still have three remaining. But who could possibly be a more prolific unknown than someone with 495 special teams snaps and zero positional snaps?
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Check back in tomorrow morning.
Part 1: