WESTERVILLE, Ohio — The Steelers will play their home opener Sunday against the Broncos with no fans in attendance. It’s a fitting environment for Benny Snell Jr., who over the years has done some of his best work when almost nobody else is watching.
Just ask Westerville Central High athletic director Andy Ey or football coach Brent Morrison. They have lost track of how many times Snell has vaulted over the six-foot high chainlink fence that surrounds their stadium like a steel moat.
During the early months of the global pandemic, the school and the stadium were closed to the public. But the Steelers running back would not be deterred from doing speed drills on the turf field. He scaled the barrier — the one with signs marked “NO Trespassing. NO Climbing Fence” — armed with orange cones and an agility ladder in hopes of improving his explosiveness.
TOM REED / DKPS
Benny Snell is no stranger to hopping this six-foot high fence at his high school in Westerville, Ohio to do some speed training on the field when the stadium is closed.
Sometimes, Snell brought his now-44-year-old father along as an accomplice.
“I saw him up there a couple times a week,” Ey said. “Benny was the same way when he played for us. So dedicated to his training. Nobody else in the stadium but him and maybe his dad.”
From his days as a lightly recruited, three-star prospect, Snell has been told why he wouldn’t flourish at the next level. He lacks speed. He lacks burst. He lacks athleticism.
And yet he keeps climbing. From Westerville Central to the University of Kentucky to the NFL. Sticking one foot above the other in life’s chainlink until he clears an obstacle.
Maybe, the 113-yard rushing performance in relief of an injured James Conner against the Giants marks the high point of his Steelers’ career. Maybe, Snell, 22, is no better than a reserve NFL back, a short-yardage specialist who will survive on toughness and resilience.
His detractors have been stacking the box for years, daring him to prove them wrong.
“That’s always what has motivated him,” his father, Ben, said. “He feeds on those snubs, going back to the days when he would go to camps and outshine more high-profile prospects.”
While the rest of us spent our spring working from home and binging on Netflix, Snell transformed his body during the height of the coronavirus outbreak. He shed 12 pounds — and a few labels.
Those who have watched his evolution aren’t surprised. Driven by his desire and guided by his father, Snell doesn’t need an audience to demonstrate his commitment.
“I saw him out there one day by himself,” Morrison said. “He was running on our track and flipping our tractor tires.”
‘THE ONLY WAY I KNOW’
Ben Snell Sr. has little pieces of his body scattered on gridirons from here to Germany. He’s still got a screw in his wrist from an injury he suffered playing overseas.
The Canton, Ohio native was a running back just like his son. He starred at small-college Ohio Northern University before earning a spot on the Ravens' practice squad as an undrafted free agent in 1998. Baltimore allocated him to the Scottish Claymores of NFL Europe, where he spent two seasons, and finished his pro career as a backup to Rod “He Hate Me” Smart with the Las Vegas Outlaws of the short-lived XFL.
SNELL FAMILY
The family combined two photos of Ben and Benny from their college playing days.
Ben had further opportunities to play in the arena leagues, but the wrist injury, coupled with family commitments, led him to Columbus, where his wife, April, grew up. He found work in sales at Honda and satisfied his football fix coaching his son in the pee-wee ranks.
Snell comes from good bloodlines. Matt Snell, a distant relative, was an outstanding running back on the 1968 Jets, who upset the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III. The second-year Steelers back has never met his famous namesake but, according to Ben, the Jets legend has followed the youngster’s progression.
As a kid, Snell learned everything it took to become a running back from his father. Ben taught his boy the fundamentals of the position and a few moves to elude would-be 8-year-old tacklers.
But his biggest lesson came far removed from those youth fields ringed with the lawn chairs of parents dreaming of high school glory and scholarship offers. It was all about the work an athlete must do when nobody is cheering him.
“I can remember when Benny was in high school and we would be finishing up practice,” former Westerville Central coach John Magistro said. “Everyone else was heading to the locker room, and there’s Benny and his dad going back on the field to do individual drills.”
Westerville Central coaches recall Ben and April, who served as booster club president, as model football parents. (The family also has a 12-year-old daughter, Simone.) There never were appeals for favoritism or second-guessing a coach’s decision.
That approach remained consistent through college.
“I love Benny’s dad,” Kentucky assistant head coach and running backs coach Eddie Gran. “The only thing he ever asked me to do was to work Benny hard.”
Snell was a dominant presence by the time he reached the Westerville Central varsity squad as a junior. Morrison calls him the most intense player he’s ever been around. Magistro likens him to former NFL receiver Joey Galloway, who he coached at Bellaire (Ohio) High, in terms of his passion for the game.
Magistro tells the story of one-on-one drills in which an undersized scout team linebacker wanted his shot at tackling the muscular 5-foot-10 man child.
“I thought Benny was going to kill him,” Magistro said. “He was just running over the kid. I remember saying, ‘Can you back off a little bit?’ He looked at me and said, ‘Coach, it’s the only way I know.’ I never asked him to back off again. That’s just something inside a player that you can’t coach.”
'HE PLAYS IT FAST'
Westerville is home to 40,000 residents and some of Central Ohio’s most colorful history.
Its civic leaders were strongly, and sometimes violently, opposed to liquor consumption within the city limits. In 1879, hotel and saloon owner Henry Corbin was catapulted from his bed — two teeth knocked from his mouth — by the force of an explosion, according to the Columbus Dispatch. It was the third time in four years town folk had dynamited one of Corbin’s establishments.
Westerville was so dry, a member of the Anti-Saloon League once boasted, “you would have to sprinkle the streets after a rain.” It wasn’t until 2004 that residents voted to grant liquor permits.
The quaint shops and restaurants along North State Street are about 15 miles from The Horseshoe, home to the Ohio State football team. In terms of Snell’s desire to play for the Buckeyes, it might as well been a million miles away.
Despite amassing prolific statistics, neither Ohio State nor any other major college program exhibited strong interest in the running back-outside linebacker. Like Westerville of yesteryear, Snell was coming up dry.
Nobody who saw him play could miss his power and extra effort. He led Central to two consecutive Division I playoff appearances, rushing for 52 touchdowns and nearly 4,000 yards in that span. Snell also played for the school’s basketball team.
“I would go to coaching clinics in Columbus and meet with recruiters and ask them why they weren’t offering Benny,” Magistro said. “There were programs at these clinics that were struggling and I wanted to say, ‘Benny isn’t better than what you’ve got right now?’”
Magistro and the Snells kept hearing the same critique from major-college scouts: Nice player, but he’s too slow and lacks explosiveness.
Fortunately, Kentucky recruiting coordinator Vince Marrow saw a fit for his SEC program. Snell committed to the Wildcats after his junior season and remained loyal even after some major schools showed late interest during his senior year.
“We tried to tell those schools Benny was ‘game fast.’” Morrison said of a running back who clocked an underwhelming 4.66 40-time at the NFL Scouting Combine. “He’s moving at a different speed than everyone else, and that may not be reflected in his 40 time in the Underwear Olympics and combines and that stuff. But when he plays the game, he plays it fast.”
‘WE MISSED HIM’
In the illustrious history of SEC football only two running backs have rushed for at least 1,000 yards and 12 touchdowns in each of their first three seasons. There’s Herschel Walker and Benny Snell Jr.
Snell made such an impression on the Wildcats, they used him as their feature back as a true freshman. In his junior season, he ran for 1,449 yards and 16 touchdowns, helping Kentucky finish 10-3 and No. 12 overall in the final Associated Press poll.
“I always tell kids, ‘Make me play you,’ ” Gran said. “ 'As I turn on the film, are you making me play you?' When you turned on the film with Benny Snell, he made me play him. By the third game of his freshman year, we said, ‘This has to be our guy.’ ”
Even as Snell compiled historic stats, it was his tenacity that stood out to coaches.
Gran’s favorite run in Snell’s college career carried for all of three yards. It came on Nov. 5, 2016 against Georgia during Snell’s freshman year. The Wildcats were driving for a game-tying field goal in the final minutes and facing a critical third-and-3.
“We don’t block anybody,” Gran recalled. “I mean, there are two guys waiting in our backfield before Benny even gets the ball. He runs through both guys to get the first down. That sums him up right there.”
As Snell was preparing to declare for the 2018 draft, recruiting gurus finally were willing to admit their mistake.
“We missed him,” Ohio recruiting expert Bill Greene told the Louisville Courier Journal. “He was really good in high school. His film was really good and he played at a good program, too. It’s not like he was hidden at some (small) school in the coal mines of Ohio or something.”
Another challenge met. Another fence cleared.
‘MATURATION PROCESS’
Six months ago, Snell showed up at his high school looking for access to its weight room. Ey loves Snell and would do almost anything to help him, but the state was on lockdown due to COVID-19.
The athletic director found a compromise. He loaned Snell some weighs and barbells that could be used to set up a gym in the family garage.
The running back hired a Columbus-based trainer and started riding bikes with old friends as a way to supplement his aerobic activity. Snell also changed his diet, eliminating fried foods such as chicken wings.
The goal was to drop weight from his 224-pound frame, a recommendation from the Steelers' staff following his rookie season.
“I think it was kind of a group decision,” Snell said in August. “I felt like there were things that I could have worked on coming out of last year already to begin with. The Steelers gave me a plan. I stuck to it, and I feel like it will help me a ton going into this year with my lateral quickness, my speed, me taking care of my body (and) the hits I can take, etc.”
The fourth-round pick rushed for 428 yards and two touchdowns on 108 attempts last season. Snell showed flashes, particularly when getting 15-plus carries a game while spelling the oft-injured Conner. He registered three 75-plus yard outings on a team bereft of an established quarterback after the Week 2 season-ending injury to Ben Roethlisberger.
But Snell expected more from himself. On draft night, he told reporters: “I’m like a Marshawn Lynch and Adrian Peterson, just fighting for those extra yards. My style of running is Steelers football.”
The rookie’s penchant for third-person references such as “Snell Yeah” and “Benny Snell football” attracted attention. His former coaches, however, saw the remarks as consistent with his off-field persona.
SNELL FAMILY
A family portrait of the Snells includes Benny, his mother April, his father Ben and his sister Simone.
“He is such an intense competitor between the lines,” Magistro said. “But he’s not a mean person. He likes to have fun in the locker room and he jokes around all the time.”
Snell has been almost Belichick bland in his media availability since arriving at training camp this year. When asked what he enjoyed more from Monday night, his 113 yards rushing or his blitz pickup that bought Roethlisberger time to throw a touchdown pass, Snell said: “I appreciate my O-linemen, making the holes and making things possible.”
His weight loss and streamlined look are the product of an almost sadistic offseason regimen spent in constant motion around Westerville. His father said Snell had grown tired of the “big back” and “short yardage” labels.
“He was working out two or three times a day,” Ben said of his son. “He kept it up continuously through the whole quarantine. It was intense. When (Roethlisberger’s) elbow was strong enough, Benny was driving to Pittsburgh to catch passes."
“Me and my wife said, ‘Maybe you need to take a break and relax and get out of town.’ He said he didn’t want to do any of that. He just wanted to put the grind in.”
Mike Tomlin cited a “maturation process” he sees in Snell who, like Le’Veon Bell and Conner, dropped weight after their rookie seasons.
“He's a quality player and one that is mature and emerging and was ready to answer the bell when called upon,” Tomlin said after the 26-16 win over the Giants.
It’s too early to predict whether Snell will supplant Conner as the Steelers’ feature back. History tells us there’s a danger in reading too much into Week 1 performances.
And that’s just fine with a player who’s been out riding fences for so long now.
But Gran watched the Monday night game, and he believes his former player can handle any workload the Steelers are willing to give him.
“The Steelers are going to find that kid will get better with time,” Gran said. “I don’t know if you can give it to him 30 times a game at that level. That’s tough. But the more you give it to him, the more he keeps rolling.”
