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Packers Sign Desperately Needed Long Snapper and Receiver

The Green Bay Packers have added two players to the roster, including a long snapper to help jump-start the kicking competition.
Bill Huber|
The Packers signed veteran long snapper Cal Adomitis.
The Packers signed veteran long snapper Cal Adomitis. | USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

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Green Bay Packers

GREEN BAY, Wis. – The Green Bay Packers have had a kicker battle waiting on standby without veteran long snapper Matt Orzech. After two days of training camp, they have signed veteran Cal Adomitis, a source told Packers On SI.

The Packers also signed UFL-champion receiver Kaden Prather. The Packers were a man down at receiver with Brenden Rice banged up.

Signing a long snapper was a necessity.

Adomitis was by far the best combination of talent and experience on the market. He snapped for the Bengals in 49 games from 2022 through 2024 and for the Eagles in nine games last season.

Adomitis was one of three long snappers who worked out for the team on Thursday. That the Packers signed an experienced snapper instead of a short-term placeholder would indicate this is going to be legitimate competition.

The Packers signed Orzech to a three-year extension last year, which included a $750,000 signing bonus. If the Packers were to move on, it would cost them $562,000 in dead cap – a small price to pay if they feel the operation runs smoother with Adomitis.

That’s to be determined, but Adomitis will bring a veteran presence to the rookie vs. rookie battle at kicker between Trey Smack and Lenny Krieg.

Last season, Adomitis joined the Eagles in Week 5 and snapped through Week 14. He replaced an injured Charley Hughlett, and was replaced by Hughlett when he was healthy again.

“This will be my fourth year in the league,” he said after joining the Eagles. “And I think one of the things about – I’m sure any position would say this – but being a specialist, you never really arrive. There’s always something you gotta work on. And so, I think for me, it’s just recognizing with every new unit or every other specialist I work with, it’s always gonna check your ego a little bit.

“You’re always gonna have to find ways to adjust and learn new things from different guys than you hadn’t even thought of before. So, I think just staying humble is a big thing when you walk into a new room. And being willing to learn from those guys and not be the guy that’s like, ‘I know everything,’ ’cause none of us do. We’re all just trying to continue to learn as we go.”

Adomitis played in 64 collegiate games and was a first-team All-American at Pittsburgh. He went undrafted in 2022.

“I originally started long snapping in my junior year in high school,” he said before the 2022 draft. “We were going into the season as one of the top 20 teams in the country. We were a stacked team, and I was basically just fighting for time as a tight end, but still not to the point that would constitute getting scholarship offers yet. My dad was the one who just said that long snapping is an additional way to get on the field.”

Known for his long hair, he cut it off in 2021 to raise $114,000 for Locks of Love.

“The actual idea grew from something I used to joke around with my old roommates about,” he said at the time. “When I first grew my hair long, they were like, ‘How much would it cost for us to cut your hair?’ Coming into this year, with the excitement around this team, I thought we could really capitalize on that to raise money for a great cause and then shave it off at the end after doing something good.”

The Packers on the first day of camp on Wednesday went through the motions during the field-goal period. On Thursday, center Sean Rhyan snapped several times. Finally, rookie kicker Trey Smack booted three chip-shot field goals.

“We may have to do that,” general manager Brian Gutekunst said before the first practice. “There’s some guys on the street we’ll probably bring some guys in to work out. He’s got a little bit of a calf, nothing long term, but it does disrupt practice when you don’t have a guy who can snap it. Special teams guys don’t like that. I don’t see what the problem is. We’ve got a JUGS Machine, we’ve got lots of things to do.

“It does disrupt practice and, quite frankly, with a rookie kicker we want to have as much practice there as we can get. It would be nice to have Matt out there and there may be a time where he’s able to do some of the snapping before he can do a lot of the running. That’s more of the issue, but hopefully we can get him back soon because that continuity there is important.”

As for Prather, he was a seventh-round draft pick by the Bills in 2025. He was released at the end of his rookie training camp with an injury settlement and did not play in a game last year.

He caught nine passes for 148 yards for the Louisville Kings of the UFL this season.

At West Virginia in 2021 and 2022 and Maryland in 2023 and 2024, he aught 162 passes for 1,966 yards and 12 touchdowns. He aught 56 passes for 624 yards and four scores as a rookie.

“Enough is never enough for me,” he said of his work ethic after being drafted. “I'm never content in my work. I always find ways to get better. Even if I have a career high game or if I have the worst game in my life, I'm going to wake up the next morning and figure out how I can get better for my teammates.”

At the Scouting Combine, he measured 6-foot-3 1/2 and ran his 40 in 4.46 seconds.

“He’s a big, straight-line, fast guy,” Bills GM Brandon Beane said. “He’s got some things to work on, which is why he’s available (in the seventh round). We also think that one of his ways to compete to make the roster could be to help on special teams.”

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Bill Huber
BILL HUBER

Bill Huber, who has covered the Green Bay Packers since 2008, is the publisher of Packers On SI, a Sports Illustrated channel. E-mail: packwriter2002@yahoo.com History: Huber took over Packer Central in August 2019. Twitter: https://twitter.com/BillHuberNFL Background: Huber graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he played on the football team, in 1995. He worked in newspapers in Reedsburg, Wisconsin Dells and Shawano before working at The Green Bay News-Chronicle and Green Bay Press-Gazette from 1998 through 2008. With The News-Chronicle, he won several awards for his commentaries and page design. In 2008, he took over as editor of Packer Report Magazine, which was founded by Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Nitschke, and PackerReport.com. In 2019, he took over the new Sports Illustrated site Packer Central, which he has grown into one of the largest sites in the Sports Illustrated Media Group.