NFL teams started the 2024 preseason schedule this week, and Carson Tinker wasn’t on a league roster. But the Alabama alumnus has been in that situation before and still handled the long snapping for an NFL team during the season.
But that won’t happen this year: Tinker announced his retirement from the NFL on Sunday via social media.
“Eleven years ago, one of my favorite coaches encouraged me to commit myself to an ‘impossible’ goal,” Tinker wrote. “Through wins and losses, injuries, championships, rejections and opportunities that only God could make happen, I was able to achieve my impossible goal of 10 seasons in the NFL.
“Today, with a full heart, I want to officially call it a career.
“Thank you to Annie and Hootie who followed me all over this country, my teammates who inspired me to be the best version of myself, my coaches who taught me lessons I will carry with me forever, fans, trainers, cafeteria, eq(uipment), turf guys, janitors, anyone else I’ve met along the way, I hop you know who you are and I hope to tell you again in person, thank you!
“Thank you, football. I gave this game everything I had, and it gave my family and me more than I could’ve ever dreamed of.”
Last season, Tinker handled the snapping for the Los Angeles Rams during their final four regular-season games and a playoff contest after regular snapper Alex Ward had sustained a stinger in the Rams’ 37-31 overtime loss to the Baltimore Ravens on Dec. 10.
That brought Tinker’s career total to 99 regular-season and two playoff games.
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After Tinker served as the long snapper on Alabama’s 2011 and 2012 BCS national-championship teams, he caught on with the Jacksonville Jaguars as an undrafted rookie in 2023. He handled all the Jaguars’ long-snapping duties from 2013 through 2016.
Tinker spent the 2017 season on injured reserve after tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee in training camp. Tinker returned to the Jaguars in 2018, but five games into the campaign, he suffered another knee injury and missed the remainder of the season.
Jacksonville released Tinker with one season remaining on a four-year, $3.65 million contract extension, and he was out of football in 2019 and on the New York Giants’ practice squad in 2020.
In 2021, Tinker snapped for the Buccaneers from the second through the ninth games while Tampa Bay’s regular long snapper, Zach Triner, recovered from an injury sustained in the season-opening contest. Tinker then made a one-game stop with the Las Vegas Raiders, playing on Dec. 5 with regular long snapper Trent Sieg on reserve/COVID-19 for the week.
Tinker finished the 2021 season with the Rams as Los Angeles won Super Bowl LVI 23-20 over the Cincinnati Bengals. Tinker served as security for Matthew Orzech but was never needed in a game. The Rams released Tinker from their practice squad six times from Dec. 28, 2021, through Feb. 1, 2022, and used the open roster spot to add a position player for practice. But before each game, Los Angeles re-signed Tinker to have him available in case Orzech got hurt.
In 2022, Tinker joined the Seattle Seahawks five days before the season-opening contest with regular long snapper Tyler Ott out with a shoulder injury, and he played in all 17 games.
While at Alabama, Tinker endured the April 27, 2011, tornado outbreak that devastated Tuscaloosa and other areas of the state. Torn from his home by the storm, Tinker sustained several injuries, including a broken wrist. His girlfriend, Ashley Harrison, who had been with him, was among those killed.
Afterward, the Alabama football team helped bring the community together, both with its outreach work and its play on the field as the Crimson Tide won the BCS national crown in 2011. For its work, the Alabama football team received the Disney’s Wide World of Sports Spirit Award at the annual college football awards program in 2011, and Tinker represented his coaches and teammates in accepting the honor.
Tinker wrote “A Season to Remember: Faith in the Midst of the Storm,” a book about his experiences during the tornado, the rebuilding and the championship season.
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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.
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