JJ Jansen is set to play his 282nd career NFL game on Sunday, and that will make him the longest-serving long snapper in league history. When he takes his first snap against the Eagles, he will move past Trey Junkin and stand alone on a list that had them tied before the weekend.
The number matters because long snapping rarely comes with public milestones beyond games played, and Jansen has spent more than 20 years stacking those games one routine at a time. Before Sunday, he and Junkin were tied for 24th on the NFL's all-time games played list with 281 appearances, and there were no long snappers ahead of them on that list. That is the part that gives the record its weight: among specialists, durability is the story.
Jansen has treated it that way, too. He said he always thought it was funny that the punter and the long snapper would warm up on first down when the Cardinals were terrible, and he still gets ready the same way now, even after a game in which his team scored 32 points. “That’s just the process,” he said. The milestone is historic on paper, but the routine behind it has never changed.
That is also why the record fits the player. Jansen already broke John Kasay's Panthers record for games played four years ago, and Kasay said he never got bored with the job. He added that people can easily get bored with it, and Jansen never has, which is how a specialist who works in the background ends up setting a record that no one else has reached. The next marker arrives Sunday, and it will come the same way all the others did: on first down, before the punt, with Jansen doing exactly what he has always done.
