Long snapping didn’t necessarily come naturally to the 30-year-old Triner, who was listed at 225 pounds as a freshman at Siena, 245 pounds as a senior at Assumption and now 247 pounds with the Bucs.
He likened the position to facing off. A specialty job, long snapping involves hours and hours of practice at one extraordinarily specific area of the game — just like how he used to do his work on the lacrosse field.
“In lacrosse, my opportunity to get on the field was at the faceoff,” said Triner, who played midfield in high school. “And there are a lot of similarities between facing off and being a specialist in the NFL. You’re doing the same thing over and over.”
Triner still picks up his stick in the offseason, and he talks lacrosse with a Bucs trainer whose son is “a heck of player.” Triner went to his practices last year.
Prior to earning his chance in the NFL, Triner also coached eighth grade lacrosse and even won a championship. But he doesn’t follow college lacrosse as much as he once did. He did, though, know enough to ask the burning question of the lacrosse world at the time of this interview: Did TD Ierlan transfer to Denver yet?
No surprise he was interested in the faceoff guy.
Triner won a MAAC championship during his lone year at Siena, a season in which he won 52.1 percent (122-for-234) of his faceoffs. The atmosphere for the “championship game” on Sunday will be just a little different, though.
Now on a first-name basis with the likes of Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski — an unthinkable twist in life when he was at Siena, he said — Triner will play on arguably the grandest stage in sports.
“I’ve been so blessed to be able to be in this position,” Triner said. “God has put me in this position for a reason, and it’s really to show that I am, in so many words, someone who scratched and clawed and fought to get this opportunity.”
For someone who’s followed his gut and persisted his entire career, he hopes that his role in the Super Bowl, even a traditionally subdued one as a long snapper, will instill hope in those striving toward dreams of their own.
“One day,” he said, “you could be playing in the Super Bowl.”