Former Notre Dame Fighting Irish long snapper Scott Daly just saw his newest NFL opportunity come to an end, as the Green Bay Packers released him from their practice squad on Monday, via the NFL transaction log.
Daly’s career has never been about headlines. At Notre Dame, that was the point.
The Downers Grove, Illinois, product arrived in South Bend as a rare scholarship long snapper — national high school long snapper of the year, ranked among the best in the country — and spent 2013 through 2016 doing the job the Irish hired him to do: stay invisible.
After a redshirt year behind Jordan Cowart, Daly snapped in every game for four seasons, stacking 39 consecutive starts and posting clean work on extra points, field goals, and punts.
In 2014, he was perfect on 127 snaps. In 2015, he was perfect again on 126 and even recovered a muffed punt at the Boston College 4-yard line. Specialists who never make the box score are usually the ones who did their job.
That same quiet competence carried him through a long professional grind. Undrafted in 2017, Daly signed with Dallas in 2018, bounced through the Alliance of American Football and the XFL, then finally stuck in the NFL with Detroit from 2021 to 2023 (42 games) and Chicago in 2024–25 (34 regular-season games plus two playoff contests).
After a 2026 camp stint in Tampa Bay ended at final cuts, Green Bay signed him to the practice squad on Sept. 2 as insurance behind Matt Orzech, who had missed training camp with a calf injury. Now that Orzech is healthy, Daly was cut loose.
There was a Notre Dame thread in Green Bay. Packers head coach Matt LaFleur was the Irish quarterbacks coach in 2014, Daly’s junior season.
After signing, Daly noted the franchise’s history and tradition felt familiar — “a lot of Notre Dame.” That comparison is easy to oversell, but the through-line is real: both places prize specialists who treat precision as a craft and anonymity as a compliment.
Daly is 32. He has already outlasted the usual shelf life for an undrafted snapper who spent years in developmental leagues.
Irish fans who remember the kid who chose South Bend over other scholarship offers, then never botched a snap in a gold helmet, will recognize the pattern.
The Packers needed a body behind an injured starter; once the immediate need faded, so did the roster spot.
For Notre Dame, Daly remains a small but clean chapter: a scholarship specialist who did the work, graduated from Mendoza, and kept finding work in a league that barely notices long snappers until one of them misses.
The next call, if it comes, will look like the last several — stay ready, stay under the radar, and snap it clean.
