LINGLE – Second-year Denver Bronco long snapper Jacob Bobenmoyer used the bye week to recharge and get away from the grind of playing professional football.
One way he does it, is by hunting.
Last week, the Broncos were on their bye week, giving the Cheyenne East and University of Northern Colorado alum a chance to return to Lingle for the third time in two years to do some hunting.
“I view hunting as an escape from football. I live in Castle Rock (Colorado), but it’s still the city. Being out where you don’t have good phone service and don’t have a lot of people is very therapeutic to me to be able to get out here with my buddies and watch the dogs work and hunt,” Bobenmoyer said. “It’s nice to be able to get away from the game to recharge to finish out the rest of the season.”
In his three trips to the area, he’s used Gowdy’s Wild Wings Bird Farm, owned by Craig Allen.
“We found Craig’s place last year,” Bobenmoyer said. “We didn’t have our pointers yet, but we had my buddy Dylan’s (Pierson) lab. We came up here and did 10 pheasants. It was a really good time, so we came back a couple weeks later and had a lot of fun again.”
This trip was different, though.
Working with young
hunting dogs
Bobenmoyer said he loves coming to Goshen County because of the remoteness.
“It’s not a very dense of a population so you have a lot of more land. The landowners are a lot more open to people hunting their land. There is a respect and appreciation for the beauty of Wyoming,” he said. “It’s a good blue collared culture where people can go hunt and harvest animals, putting food on their table through their work.”
He and his friend Dylan Pierson, also of Cheyenne, brought some young hunting dogs along to give them an opportunity to see what they could do in a real hunting situation.
He stressed it takes a lot of time and patience to work with such young pups. Friday was a challenging day because of the wind, and on a day like that, the two hunters wanted to see how the dogs pointed and used the wind.
“I want to see them show some maturity in their steadiness. You want them steady and holding the point until you shoot. Then retrieving the bird and bringing it back to you,” he explained. “My thing is, as long as he holds point and doesn’t bust any birds, giving us time to go pick them up and shoot them, it makes for a good time.”
Watching and working with his dogs are what he gets the most out of hunting.
“Today, I hope their technique is on point, and that I’m a good enough shot to give them a couple birds to retrieve,” Bobenmoyer said.
That wasn’t an issue for Bobenmoyer and Pierson as they bagged five birds in the first hour in the field which he considered the day a success considering how young and inexperienced the dogs are.
In addition to the hunting, he also got to visit family, get work done around the house, visit hist girlfriend, caught up on house chores and finished a landscaping project during his time off from football.
But in his return to Denver the following week, he knew it was going to be back to business.
Back to business
The Broncos were coming off a 30-13 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles prior to the bye week and now face the top two teams in the AFC West Division in consecutive weeks – the Los Angeles Chargers and the Kansas City Chiefs.
“It’s about being a pro and having the ability to move on and start a new week. You have to keep your head up and keep on grinding and keep on chugging,” Bobenmoyer said. “It’s nice to win every game. It sucks to lose, but you have to keep on grinding. You really start grinding when you face adversity, and you are able to bounce back. It shows a lot in our team.”
As a long snapper, Bobenmoyer plays a position which isn’t a high-profile spot.
He stressed consistency is the No. 1 thing when it comes to being a successful long snapper.
“As a long snapper in the NFL, you have to snap a good ball consistently and then after that comes protection, and then the coverage and tackling downfield are a bonus,” Bobenmoyer said. “You can do only so many drills snapping a ball, and really you need to make sure you get as many live reps in during the offseason to make sure you ready for the season.”
When it comes to training for being a long snapper, he said it’s like any other position on the field.
“I train like a normal football player like I did when I was a linebacker in college,” Bobenmoyer said. “Getting bigger, faster and stronger always helps.”
Finding his way
into the NFL
Bobenmoyer got the attention of the Denver coaching staff during the East-West Shrine game his senior year at Northern Colorado.
They stayed in contact and eventually worked out for them on an NFL Pro Day. He attended a rookie minicamp and despite not being signed, got invited back for the veteran minicamp.
Bobenmoyer had three additional workouts with the Broncos throughout the year before signing with Denver.
Finally, in March of 2020, he inked a deal with the team, won the starting job in training camp and has appeared in every game since – 26 games total.
“The hardest part of the NFL is staying in the NFL,” Bobenmoyer said.
That’s why he turned to two special team cohorts in punter Sam Martin and kicker Brandon McManus as mentors.
“They are both eight, nine years in the league, and they are definitely considered vets. They’ve helped me with the mental part of it, working my way around the system and how to carry yourself,” Bobenmoyer said. “You don’t necessarily have to ask. You can just see how they act and go about their day. You can learn a lot from vets like that because what they do works since they’ve been in the league a long time.”
Bobenmoyer says he has to pinch himself every now and then when he gets to don the blue and orange on Sunday afternoons.
“It definitely is a special feeling. You sometimes have to pinch yourself because it doesn’t always seem real,” he said. “At the end of the day, it’s just football. It’s no different than how I viewed high school or college. Yeah, it can be more stressful, but it’s cool doing it at that high level and make a living out of it.”
