After handling the long-snapping duties in 125 of the Tennessee Titans' 144 regular season games the past nine seasons, Ken Amato remains an unrestricted free agent. While the Titans want to go younger at the position, kicker Rob Bironas hopes to have his guy back.
"To be perfectly honest, I'm not looking for a new long snapper," Bironas said, according to a Monday report Alex Cate of The Tennessean. "Ken Amato has been my guy since I got in town.
"It's up to the staff and what they're looking for," Bironas conceded. "I have to make it work regardless of what I want to do."
The candidates to replace Amato are Jake Ingram, a 27-year-old former sixth-round pick out of Hawaii who appeared in 25 games for the New England Patriots and New Orleans Saints during the 2009 and 2010 seasons.
Ingram participated in the Titans' training camp last summer, but was waived in mid-August and finished the preseason with the Jacksonville Jaguars.
The other candidate is rookie Beau Brinkley, who played his college ball at Missouri.
According to a source with knowledge of his contract, Brinkley received a $20,000 signing bonus, a significant amount of guaranteed money for a rookie snapper and the largest bonus the Titans gave to an undrafted free agent this offseason.
Despite that bonus, Brinkley is not guaranteed a roster spot and head coach Mike Munchak hasn't fully closed the door on the 35-year-old Amato.
"You don't close the door on anything," Munchak said. "We feel strongly about Kenny as a person and as a player, the great things he has done for us. That is the hard part, the business part. Now it is just a matter of how this thing plays out."
