Darren Rizzi explains why Broncos have a second long snapper

Undrafted rookie long snapper Luke Basso is the longest of long shots to make the Denver Broncos‘ 53-man roster this summer.

Denver’s incumbent long snapper, Mitchell Fraboni, is proven and reliable, and after Basso struggled in the team’s preseason opener last week, Fraboni isn’t in any danger of losing his job. So why are the Broncos even carrying a second long snapper on the roster this summer?

Special teams coordinator Darren Rizzi explained the reasoning earlier this week.

“I think a couple of things,” Rizzi said. “I think people wouldn’t realize, but wear and tear on the long snapper, [and] a little competition never hurts either. We always evaluate the long snappers. This long snapper class, this college class, I think I mentioned way back, was actually a little bit of a unicorn because there were a number of guys that actually ended up in camps. Some years there are zero, and this year I think there were five or six.

“So we saw something in Luke, but also if you look around the league, I think like four or five long snappers have already been injured here in the preseason. The team we’re playing this week, their long snapper got injured, a few others, so it’s a long process. I thought having another guy in the offseason, both for competition and not to take anything away from Luke, I really thought Luke did a heck of a job in his college career, and we saw some ability there. So it was a bunch of different reasons.”

That’s a reasonable explanation. Basso’s not going to upset Fraboni (at least, it doesn’t appear he will), but the Broncos will now have a fallback option who has trained with Rizzi all summer in case Fraboni is ever unavailable. Basso’s probably competing for a practice squad spot at best, but he’s getting valuable reps, and Fraboni is facing some camp competition. He’s extremely unlikely to make the Week 1 roster, but Basso could be an option for Denver down the road.

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This article originally appeared on Broncos Wire: Darren Rizzi explains why Broncos have a second long snapper