Husky Roster Review: No Longer Green, Snapper Becomes Ultra Reliable
Jaden Green is not your typical long snapper. He has a filled-out frame made for full-blown contact, actual biceps created in the weight room, a physique that suggests he's far more than a fourth-down hood ornament.
This University of Washington football player likes to hit people just as much as the next guy.
Whereas some snappers might hike the ball and basically sit down on the artificial surface and sit out the play, Green has accumulated 7 career tackles is his Husky career.
At least for each down doled out to. him one at a time, the 5-foot-11, 219-pound junior from Mesa, Arizona, wants to be that full-service Husky player as much as possible.
That's one of the reasons why he arrived at the UW as a special-teams player with a scholarship rather than a kicker or snapper who usually has to come in and earn one down the line.
"I love to live up to it," he said. "Do my job and see what I'm worth."
Going down the roster from No. 0 to 99, Green, who wears No. 89 as a special-teamer, is next up in a series of profiles about each of the Huskies' scholarship players and assorted walk-ons, summing up their spring football performances and surmising what might come next for them.
An athlete rather than simply a football specialist, Green is a second-generation college football player, the son of former Arizona State running back Gerald Green.
From the archives, the older Green, in fact, rushed for a game-high 82 yards on 18 carries in the Sun Devils' 28-7 victory over the UW in Husky Stadium in 1999.
Jaden Green showed he could do more than whisk a football on a line to a holder or a punter. As a senior at Mesa High School in the Phoenix suburbs, he rushed 20 times for 97 yards and 4 touchdowns and caught 25 passes for 219 yards and 2 scores.
In three seasons at the UW, Green has handled the ball roughly 235 times in kicking situations and everything has gone well for him with the exception of his baptismal college snap. It was a disaster.
Against Oregon State in the opener of the pandemic-curtailed 2020 season, Green on the first Husky punt of the game rifled one over Race Punter's head. There was more. Porter somehow recovered the bad snap and tried to get off a punt, but had it blocked and the Beavers' Jaydon Grant scooped it up and ran 11 yards for a touchdown.
At that point, Green's college career was just over five minutes old. The snap was a anomaly during the COVID crisis. It hasn't happened since. Everything has been spot on.
He has two seasons to go and gives the UW great comfort in his reliability on fourth down now. He's also good for that more than occasional tackle. Considering those big biceps, he could probably arm wrestle just about anyone, too.
JADEN GREEN FILE
Service: Green has played in all 29 games held during his three seasons.
Stats: He has one bad UW snap and probably 234 in a row that have been perfect.
Role: Green is the No. 1 snapper, with Alex Froelich and Caleb Johnston in reserve behind him, and the job likely is his until he graduates.
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