Albuquerque Journal

Job's a Snap for Lobo Senior
By Greg Archuleta, Journal Staff Writer

Jake Bowe's University of New Mexico football career has been about being the ultimate role player. It's only fitting that the senior now finds himself atop the depth chart at the most unsung position on the team.
       
The former La Cueva standout is the leading candidate to be the Lobos' deep snapper on their punt unit — a position that gets noticed only when not done correctly.
      
 “My job is to help the team anyway I can,” Bowe says. “If it's at deep snapper, that's what I need to be good at.”
       
At 6-foot-1, 200 pounds, Bowe has been caught in the “tweener” category at the Division I level — not quite big enough to play linebacker and not quite fast enough to be an every-down defensive back.
      
 That's a change from his prep days, when Bowe was good at a lot of things. As quarterback and all-state defensive back, he helped lead the Bears to a 13-0 record and a 5A state championship.
       
Getting on the field at UNM has been an arduous process for Bowe.
       
“He's on every one of our special teams,” safeties coach Danny Gonzales says. “The thing about Jake is that he shows up to practice every day and gives everything he can.”
       
Despite his special-teams prowess, Bowe didn't have deep-snapping anywhere on his radar screen — even though UNM graduated four-year starter Jon O'Brien last season — because Bowe never had done it before.
       
The Lobos were in such dire straits for a replacement during spring practice that starting middle linebacker Zach Arnett was the team's most consistent snapper.
       
“If I'm the deep snapper next season, we're in big trouble,” Arnett said at the time.
      
 It wasn't until the end of summer volunteer workouts that Bowe stumbled onto the idea.
      
 “About three weeks ago, I was messing around with one of the other safeties, just snapping the ball back, playing around,” Bowe says. “Later that day, (assistant strength) coach Joaquin (Chavez) asked me. He said, 'Hey come out and try to do some deep-snapping for us.' So that's really how it started.”
       
Bowe and true freshman Tim Lutz, an Eldorado graduate, are the leading candidates for the job.
      
 “I'd say Jake is our deep-snapper as of right now,” head coach Rocky Long says.
      
 Gonzales says Bowe impressed him at lobo back during UNM's first practice in shoulder pads Wednesday.
      
 “He was more physical,” Gonzales says. “He made a couple of plays I didn't think he could make. We need a third or fourth lobo back that we can rotate. We're looking to see if Jake or (redshirt freshman) Joe Harris or anybody else can do it.”
       
Three weeks into his new job, Bowe says the assignment is equally difficult.
      
 “You're thinking about a lot of different things,” Bowe says. “You want to get some power on the ball when it's going back there, but sometimes when you're going for power, for me I lift my butt up. That makes the ball go high.
       
“You're also trying to listen to the snap call, listen to the cadence, figure out which direction you're going to go, which direction you're going to block. When you're constantly thinking about all those different things, it tends to take away from the snapping a little bit. It's very tedious process right now.”
       
Compounding the problem for Bowe to find consistency is the team's competition at punter. Adam Miller is 6-2 and Matt Barnard is 6-1, but walk-on T.J. Tahti is only 5-9.
      
 “Some are taller; some are shorter,” Bowe says. “Obviously, a ball that's right at one of the tall guys' heads might be too high for one of the shorter guys, so you've gotta constantly get those reps in and try to get it perfected.”
       
Otherwise, Bowe finally might get some attention — unwanted.
       
EASY COME, EASY GO: The Nicky Lawson experiment is over, Long said. Lawson, a former scholarship wide receiver from Manzano who left the team last year and walked back on Monday, quit again after two days of practice.