Six years ago, Tom Brady was completing a 10-point comeback in the fourth quarter of Super Bowl XLIX against the Seahawks for his fourth career title.
Six year ago, Zach Triner was grinding away as an investment consultant at Fidelity Investments in Nashua, New Hampshire, cheering on his hometown Patriots in yet another Super Bowl.
Fast forward to the present, the two are now teammates and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are preparing to play in Super Bowl LV against the Kansas City Chiefs.
Triner’s journey to where he is today is nothing short of remarkable.
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Growing up in Marshfield, Massachusetts, Triner was like most New England kids, a die-hard Patriots fan. But while many had Brady, Vince Wilfork and Wes Welker jerseys, he was a little different. He rocked a Lonie Paxton jersey.
“Wow, you’re probably the only non-family member to have my jersey,” Paxton, the long-time Patriots long snapper, joked to Triner when the two were able to meet a few years ago.
Although he took an interest to the position, it wasn’t until high school when Triner began to play it. At a summer camp on a hot summer day, he observed a small group of players getting some heavy instruction from the coaching staff.
Triner was curious as to what was going on.
“What are they doing and why am I over here?” he asked the coaches. “They were like, ‘Oh, those are the long snappers.’ I was like, ‘Well, I can definitely do that. Let me go try that.’
“I ended up being pretty good at it and that’s how I started.”
After graduating from Marshfield High School, Triner attended Siena College in 2011 where he played lacrosse and won a conference championship before falling to Syracuse in the NCAA’s. Following the season, head coach Brian Brecht took a job at Rutgers and Triner took that opportunity to evaluate his own situation.
Ultimately, he transferred to Assumption College to play football for Cory Bailey, who heavily recruited him. While Bailey moved on to Coastal Carolina as an assistant after his first season, Triner stayed at Assumption for the remaining two seasons of his collegiate career.
He wasn’t just a long snapper, either.
“I played anywhere where they let me,” Triner said. “I played d-tackle, d-end, tight end, fullback, kickoffs, wherever they put me.”
Triner finished his three seasons at Assumption with 66 total tackles and 8.5 sacks. Like most college players, especially at the D-II level, there wasn’t an invite to the NFL Combine or much interest from NFL teams at all. However, he knew that the average time for long snappers to land a starting job in the NFL was three years post college.
With that in mind, he wasn’t about to give up on his dream of playing in the NFL.
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Following his graduation, Triner couldn’t just sit around and hope to get a phone call from a NFL team, he needed to earn a living, yet still have the ability to workout consistently to keep his long snapping craft sharp.
Thankfully, he was able to do that with an investment consulting position at Fidelity Investments in Nashua, New Hampshire.
“When I went into that interview, I was like, ‘Hey, I am really interested in this job. I would love to work for you guys, but I am also doing this football thing.’ I am sure they were like, ‘Great Zach, that’s cool, dream,’” Triner said.
“They stuck to their word because any time I had to go — it started out slow like it was one workout a year, then two, then eight, then 10. They were awesome about it from Day 1 to the last day.”
The job gave him the flexibility to leave when workout opportunities presented themselves and use a gym near the Nashua office during off hours. And then when his position was relocated to Rhode Island, Triner was able to use the Bryant University facilities.
“There’s a saying that it takes a village; I am the definition of that,” said Triner. “There were so many people who helped me.”
Although NFL teams began to call, it would still be quite a while before Triner’s professional football dreams would be realized.
Following the 2015 draft, he worked out for the Patriots, but nothing came of it. The following year, 2016, he participated in the Texans’ rookie minicamp, but didn’t get offered a contract. In 2017 he signed a futures contract with the Jets, but was released after OTAs. At the end of the 2017 season he signed with the Packers’ practice squad to receive a futures contract for 2018 and made it through OTAs, into training camp and even played in preseason games. But ultimately was released on cut-down day.
While this was obviously frustrating, Triner had reason to keep believing.
“The whisper God always told me, ‘if you’re going to continue to take a step forward, there’s no need to stop,'” he said. “So, as long as the trajectory was going up there was no need for me to stop.”
Ultimately, his efforts paid off in early 2019 when he signed a futures contract with the Buccaneers. And he had a feeling this one would be different.
“I knew at that time they didn’t have a snapper and they were open to whoever won the job and that’s really all you can ask for,” Triner said.
He ultimately won the job and was the teams’ long snapper for the 2019 season. Not only that, he signed a two-year contract into 2020.
Finally getting to be one of 32 long snappers in the NFL was special enough, but little did he know that his journey was about to get even better.
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On March 20 of last year, Triner was having breakfast at home with his wife, Carissa, when the breaking news came across the TV that Brady was signing with the Buccaneers.
“Oh my goodness, I can’t believe this is going to happen — is this a dream?’” Triner recalled saying to his wife. “All of my friends were blowing up my phone, obviously, because we’re from Boston and I have had the same group of friends since I was little. To have that same group of friends that we grew up watching the games and pretended to be him in the backyard and have him as your teammate, it’s pretty special.”
And it got even more special a few weeks later when Rob Gronkowski came out of retirement and was traded from New England to Tampa Bay.
So, what was it like for Triner to meet his new teammate, the guy he grew up idolizing?
“A lot of my friends and family made it a lot bigger deal than I was,” he said. “But because they did, I kind of had to make sure that I went up to him and introduced myself and said I was from Boston and how excited I was. I just made sure I broke that ice.”
Given the COVID-19 pandemic, it wasn’t a traditional offseason as full team activities didn’t happen until late July with training camp.
It was then where he was able to observe Brady up close and begin viewing the QB more as a teammate than the player he looked up to growing up. While Triner acknowledged Brady’s work ethic is something that stands out the most, it’s also his ability to connect with his teammates.
“One of the things that stood out was a conversation he had in training camp with another teammate,” he recalled. “It was just him and this other guy and he was just pointing out, ‘I really noticed on this route you did this and this. You must’ve really worked on that in the offseason. That is really going to help you in this part of the game, in this part of the season, on this particular play.’
“To dive down into that level of detail on a simple compliment, that’s unbelievable and is something that will stick with me forever.”
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The season didn’t start out great for the Buccaneers, as they were 3-2 after five weeks and then 7-5 at the bye in late November after losing two straight games. However, that week was the turning point.
Since then, Tampa hasn’t lost a game. The team went 4-0 to close the regular season to earn a Wild Card spot and then won three straight road games to advance to Super Bowl LV.
Triner has seen plenty of Brady postseason moments, but not up close and personal like this current run, which included road wins against Drew Brees and Aaron Rodgers the last two weeks.
“You hear all the NFL Films one-liners or two-liners that he has on the sideline and it’s nice to hear on the TV, but it’s actually just as nice to hear on the sideline if your leader is giving you confidence and making sure you’re staying on track mentally,” he said. “That means a lot.”
Getting to the Super Bowl with a childhood idol as a teammate have certainly made for some great memories over the course of the last year.
So, what’s Triner’s most memorable one?
“The next one,” he said.