Creed Humphrey might be on the verge of making Super Bowl history.
"Might be" because no one seems definitively sure if the second-team All-Pro would actually become the first left-handed center to lift the Lombardi Trophy if the Kansas City Chiefs beat the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday.
Told Wednesday he's poised to be the first southpaw snapper to win it all, Humphrey responded: "Really!?"
When this USA TODAY Sports reporter then admitted he had no idea if it was 100% true – particularly since centers snapped with both hands on the football years ago – Humphrey let loose a belly laugh.
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Yet this isn't as trivial a matter as one might assume. Left-handed pivots seem to be a rarity at all levels of football and, naturally, even more so in the NFL.
Several of his teammates were queried, but none could recall playing with one aside from Humphrey.
It was a consideration when we were evaluating him," Chiefs offensive line coach Andy Heck told USA TODAY Sports. "In the end, we decided, 'No, it's not going to be an issue.'
The primary concern seems to be that when a quarterback takes a direct snap, he's used to the way the ball comes up from a right-hander. Heck said it "spins a different way" from Humphrey.
Former Atlanta Falcons center James Stone had to adapt to quarterbacks, not vice versa.
All quarterbacks like to get their under-center (snaps) right-handed, and it's just more comfortable for me to do the (shotgun) with my left hand because I'm left-handed," Stone told ESPN in 2014. "I've been doing it that way since college."
And Stone, who wasn't drafted, still only lasted in the league for four years. Humphrey, a two-time Big 12 offensive lineman of the year at Oklahoma, was selected in the second round of the 2021 draft. That, plus his topflight performance through two seasons, suggests he'll be sticking around for quite a while.
"I wonder if (being left-handed) is one of the reasons maybe he wasn't picked higher, because the traits would dictate that he should've been picked higher," Eagles five-time All-Pro center Jason Kelce told USA TODAY Sports, adding he'd once had a teammate – whom he didn't want to identify – who was a lefty but had been forced to learn how to snap with his right hand.
"I know that some teams steer away from a left-handed center. You don't see a lot of them. Whatever he's doing is working really well."
Humphrey worked with Heisman Trophy winner Baker Mayfield at Oklahoma but didn't actually play with him during his 2017 redshirt season. The next two years, Humphrey was delivering the ball to another Heisman winner, Kyler Murray, and then, in 2019, to Jalen Hurts – who will be starting for the Eagles in Super Bowl 57.