Spencer Triplett Hones Niche As UNC's Steady Long Snapper

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Watching Spencer Triplett snap the ball with unmatched precision and consistency to his high school punters and quarterbacks was something to behold for Shelby High School head coach Mike Wilbanks.

Wilbanks, who spent three years as Triplett’s offensive line coach before becoming head coach in his senior year, previously coached on teams that selected offensive linemen to convert into long snappers through training. Triplett was different, though. The quickness and fluidity of his snaps were advanced beyond what specialists of that age could do.

Wilbanks said he never had to worry about the snap with Triplett in the middle.

“From early on, we noticed that snap was a tight spiral,” Wilbanks told Inside Carolina. “We have long snappers all the time in high school; they just try to take a kid and make him a long snapper. And that ball may look like a duck coming back there, but with Spencer, it was like somebody had thrown a pass back there. It was always waist-high for the punter. It was just uncanny how perfect it was. It was always just spot on.”

From his sophomore year to his senior year, Triplett was Shelby High School’s full-time center and long snapper. He’s now in his sixth season at North Carolina, where he’s served as a special teams snapper since his arrival.

Triplett has played a prominent role on UNC’s special teams unit since 2022, acting as the snapper for field goals and extra points. His role expanded to snapping on punts as well. Triplett’s role is generally unappreciated by the average football fan, but he delights in the service he does in the third phase — even if he doesn’t get the glory for it.

“I take a huge pride in it, because it’s a really unseen part of the game,” Triplett said earlier this month. “Usually, when a punt comes on, and Tom (Maginness) can attest, everybody is usually going to get the concessions. They’re on their phone. No one’s paying attention to it. But for us, it’s a huge part of our game because that’s all we do. And so I put a lot of passion into what I do and perfecting what my craft is, whether it’s snapping or blocking.”

Triplett wasn’t a kid whom the coaches ordered to figure out the long snapping game. Instead, he picked up the special teams craft before he made it to high school.

His older brother played kicker, making Triplett — a sixth grader at the time — want to kick himself. He soon realized that the kicking game didn’t come naturally to him, so he decided to snap for his brother and be part of the process that way. He took it a step further in high school, attending camps designed to help him improve his technique.

Triplett attended the Rubio Long Snapping camp, which helped him see where he stacked up against other long snappers around the country. By the time he left high school, Rubio Long Snapping ranked him as the No. 1 long snapper in North Carolina.

Wilbanks observed Triplett’s work ethic with the offensive line group, coming before and staying after practice to get reps with his snaps. Triplett even changed his body type to better play on the line. He weighed around 200 pounds as a sophomore and bulked up to better contend on the offensive line. Wilbanks credited Triplett for being one of the most coachable players he’s ever worked with.

“He is probably one of the more coachable kids I’ve ever had,” Wilbanks said. “He’s like a sponge, man. Whatever you tell him, he would take it.

“He never was contradictory at all. He was always very receptive to what we were telling him, and would try to apply it. I tell our players all the time, being coachable means I’m going to tell you something, I’m gonna try to help you get better, but I wanted to see you try to apply it and make yourself better. He was just the epitome of that.”

Triplett walked onto the Tar Heels when Mack Brown was at the helm. At the end of the 2024 season, Brown’s staff placed Triplett on scholarship. Bill Belichick’s staff kept him on scholarship after Belichick’s December hire.

Triplett said he’s enjoyed working with Belichick’s staff, as Belichick himself is a special teams-minded coach. He said the staff places more responsibility on the players, giving him the ability to do a lot of scout work by himself.

“It’s honestly been a lot more beneficial, because in the past, it really wasn’t encouraged as much, and now it’s kind of like this is what pros are going to do,” Triplett said. “So if you want to get to that level, you’ve got to get used to it now. And that’s what I really like about having Coach Belichick and the new staff in, especially with Coach (Mike) Priefer, he’s the same way. He wants us to know who we’re going up against, what their tendencies might be, and try and figure out what we can do in practice to best prepare for it.”

In August, Triplett was placed on the watch list for the Patrick Mannelly Award, given to college football’s best long snapper. This year’s winner will be selected on Dec. 13, and a win for Triplett would make him the third ACC player and first Tar Heel to win the award since its 2019 inception.

Triplett, as he believes every long snapper in the country also did, paid great attention to Belichick’s popular 10-minute soliloquy about the history of long snapping and the evolution of the position.

For him, it’s nice to play for a coach who appreciates special teams as much as he does. Triplett has stayed at North Carolina for more than half a decade to keep his options open after school, but he hopes to extend his football career beyond his time at UNC. 

Triplett loves to snap and he loves to block, and as a result, he’s been a steady special teams presence for North Carolina over the years.

“Spencer’s done a nice job,” Belichick said earlier this month. “We’ve adjusted a couple things with him in terms of his blocking, things like that that are maybe a little bit different than what he’d done in the past. And he’s done a great job on that, too.”