As he watched his son sling fire off the line, John Crosby turned to Jackson Cook with a question about his family's future in football.

Surprised about the inquiry, Cook thought Crosby was going to ask about the ceiling of his son, Henry Crosby, given his run-ins with confident parents, but John just wanted an honest assessment on whether his son had the skills to play long snapper at the next level.

"I cannot remember my reaction, but it was a little bit weird. I think I scared him," Cook said. "I remember being shocked, going 'I thought you came to me to get an evaluation not, all jokes aside, what round he's going in,' and Dad's just going, 'Is he good enough? Can he really do this?' I'm going, 'Holy crap. Can he do it? Just watch.'"

Cook initially thought John and Henry came to him to work on the intricacies of the position, but looking for the validation of if Henry was good enough to pursue snapping in college showed a different side of investment from the Crosby family.

John met Cook through a mutual friend in Cook's home state of Alabama, where Cook snapped for the Crimson Tide in the 1990s. Before Henry's junior season, John asked Cook for an individual practice with Henry after an event held by OneOnOne Kicking Camps.

"We're a baseball family. We've spent 1,000s and 1,000s of dollars on traveling baseball. We thought Henry was going to play at some small school for baseball," John said. "And (Cook) goes, 'Absolutely, he needs to be doing this (instead).'"

Henry primarily starred on the diamond until he reached his freshman year at Memphis (Tenn.) Evangelical Christian School, a program that's produced long snappers Morgan Cox of the Tennessee Titans, Bennett Brady of the Tennesse Volunteers and Preston Brady, who snapped at Memphis.

"After his junior year, Bennett Brady came back on campus and was snapping, and (Bennett and Henry) had a conversation about what his life was like at Tennessee as a snapper," John said. "At that point, Henry is like, 'This is what I want to do.'"

Henry played wide receiver at Evangelical Christian School as well, so his athleticism translated in his ability to get down the field and cover punts after the snap. Yet more colleges have transitioned to having larger long snappers to block.

As a high schooler, Henry boasted a size out of the norm for long snappers at 6-foot-3, 180 pounds. That body structure bodes well in the eyes of Missouri, a program that wants to add more weight to Henry's frame.

Cook assisted in Henry's recruitment by fielding calls from collegiate programs. As it came down to Missouri and Vanderbilt, the Commodores made multiple hard pushes for the in-state specialist, but Missouri felt like the best fit for Henry.

"The one thing I want to tell you about Missouri is those coaches did it right," Cook said. "They made him feel that that's the place he needed to be, and that is not smoke. That's not me making it up. It was hard for him."

This past summer, Henry received invitations to snap at 12 collegiate camps, and he began his series of visits at Missouri. Special teams assistant Brock Olivo made Henry and his family feel wanted from the beginning, opening the door to a tight-knit program the Crosby family had only experienced once before at Clemson.

"He looked at Henry, and I'm standing there next to him, and he's like, 'Hey, your frame, your ability, your athleticism, you can do this,'" John recounted from Olivo. "He goes, 'I don't see anyone better coming through this summer.'"

Still wondering if Henry could play at the next level, John was giddy hearing that assessment from Olivo.

"I was like a little schoolgirl," John said. "I was fired up."

Olivo and special teams coordinator Erik Link checked in with Henry multiples times a week over the past few months, reaffirming the program's interest in him and only him. The coaches also gave their phone numbers to Henry's parents, telling Mom and Dad to call and text whenever a question arose.

"They just made her feel like legit and heard and answered her questions that she had," John said about his wife. "Link gave us his phone number and said call with anything you ever want."

Henry announced his verbal commitment to Missouri on Nov. 20 as a preferred walk-on, opting for the further school from home. While the NCAA will enact a 105-player roster limit for this upcoming season, the Crosby family trusted in the Tigers, even with the scholarship cap being removed and numbers of walk-on players likely to decrease.

With junior Brett Le Blanc rostered, Missouri wanted one additional snapper for the foreseeable future. The past two seasons, the program split snapping duties between punts and field goals with Le Blanc and Trey Flint, who exhausted his eligibility in 2024.

Henry's athletic background derives from different muscle movements he mastered in other sports, including his time spent in baseball, but he also competed in swimming, which has shown similar structural motion to snapping.

"If you think about that pulling of the stroke and how much that has to do with long snapping, and I know that's silly, but most people don't put the two and two together, but I feel like there's something there," Cook said.

In that same case of analyzing different movements, Cook added long snappers can't be the smartest player on the field.

Cook praised Henry for what he accomplished in the class room, noting a humble nature of the specialist, but when it came to snapping, he mentioned he's teaching Henry to not over evaluate where each snap lands.

"If Henry does what he wants to do, he's got the next level attributes to put him on that next level," Cook said.

Within the perfection of the position, there's an industry saying that a coach can have 99 problems, but the long snapper can't be one. The long snapper must do his job and be perfect at the same time.

"You nailed it when you when it comes to that kid," Cook said. "Matter of fact, if you don't write about him again, about anything else, he's going to be quiet because he's going to do his job, he's going to go to class. ... It's one of those where he fits the role of the long snapper. If you don't know who the long snapper is, then he's done his job."

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