The more you can do, the better. That’s true of any player on an NFL roster but doubly so for defensive lineman Logan Lee, doing all he can to make the back end of the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 53-man roster. Saturday night against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Lee’s primary contributions came not along the d-line but on special teams. Replacing injured long snapper Christian Kuntz, Lee snapped to Corliss Waitman and Cameron Johnston on punts and for kicker Ben Sauls. All while getting Pittsburgh out of the game without a James Harrison-esque gaffe.
Mike Tomlin spoke highly of Lee’s extra work. As did his teammates.
“He’s a dawg,” wide receiver Roman Wilson told Missi Matthews after the Steelers’ 17-14 loss at Acrisure Stadium. “I spent a lot of time with him last year. Great dude. I love him. He’s a dawg. He does it all.”
Wilson and Lee spent much of their rookie seasons on injured reserve. Lee went down with a late-preseason hamstring injury that saw him placed on IR ahead of Week 1. Though he returned to practice late in the season, he was never placed back onto the team’s 53-man roster and has yet to play in his first regular-season game. Wilson spent the latter half of the season with Lee on injured reserve.
Lee’s competent snaps didn’t come by accident. As we noted throughout our daily training camp notes, Lee consistently snapped during the warmup phase of practice. Any extra time the 2024 sixth-round pick had was spent hiking the ball to Waitman and Johnston just in case his services were ever needed.
After the Steelers released backup snapper Tucker Addington in training camp, Lee was next man up. But even some of his teammates didn’t realize Lee was going to be called upon.
“Oh my God, at first I didn’t know Logan Lee was out there,” rookie DL Derrick Harmon told reporters after the game. “Then [outside linebackers coach Denzel Martin] told me, ‘Yeah, that’s Logan.’ But I see him at practice before practice working on snaps, so it’s no surprise.”
Lee’s snapping dates back to his days at Orion High School in Illinois. A star tight end and defensive lineman, he also served as a long snapper. As he told reporters like ESPN’s Brooke Pryor, a small town and football team meant there weren’t specialists like “snapper.”
From Friday to Saturday nights, Lee didn’t miss a beat. Not every snap was perfect, but he got the job done. No football was too high or too low that it couldn’t be handled by veterans like Johnston and Waitman. Even the unique operation of a defensive lineman snapping to a rookie left-footed kicker didn’t cause things to go awry. Sauls missed his only field goal attempt, but it didn’t appear to be snap-related, and multiple of Lee’s hikes on punts were perfect.
Per Mike Tomlin, Kuntz seemingly avoided a serious injury. Even if he did, the team would sign a “true” snapper from the free agent pool. But Lee made a case of why a versatile resume is needed and it’s the perfect quirky story befitting the preseason. It sure won’t hurt his chances of sticking around past roster cutdowns.
