Casey Kreiter’s locker in the corner of the room at Dove Valley seems like an afterthought, as if the janitor crammed in one more spot at the last minute. It seems to fit the Broncos’ long snapper. He plays a position even hardcore fans don’t notice.

But Kreiter’s path to the NFL was extraordinary. After going undrafted in 2014, the former Iowa Hawkeyes snapper was invited to Dallas Cowboys training camp the past two seasons but didn’t make their roster. So he returned to Iowa and started teaching high school and middle school.

Right before he became a full-time science teacher in Iowa City, the Broncos called for one more invite to training camp. And this time, Kreiter made the team. He played his first NFL game three weeks ago in the Broncos’ season opener.

Do you have the best locker in the room or the worst?

Definitely the best. I get my own little corner here. You can do some fun stuff. Put pictures up. It’s quiet. But sometimes it gets crowded, as you can see. Some of this stuff, I kept these boxes because that’s like a foot rest there and that other one is like a desk. It’s a little makeshift. But I’d say this is the best locker.

Is that your Harry Potter poster on the wall?

That started in camp. Britton (Colquitt, former Broncos punter) is a huge Harry Potter fan. I saw this at Target for like a $1. And bought it. And we put it up and it stuck. Then we surrounded it with other pictures. We’ve talked about taking it down, but I think we just leave it because it’s there.

Are all those snacks yours? You could use a mini-fridge.

We thought about a mini-fridge. During camp, my wife sent me a care package and it had some fruit snacks and my father-in-law makes deer jerky, so she sent a bag of that. And we ran out of all of it. And Mac (kicker Brandon McManus) said, “We could use more fruit snacks.” So he went to Costco and got some fruit snacks and brought them in. They’re kind of community snacks. The O-line is over here every once in a while taking some fruit snacks.

You could set up a commissary and sell snacks in here.

Like a convenience store. We could. But it’s all love. Whoever wants some, it’s fair game. (Offensive lineman) Dillon Day really liked the deer jerky. I had to shoo him away.

How has it been for you on the field so far?

It’s different than what I’m used to this time of year. Just because I had been at home, substitute teaching and training, trying to get to this point. There are always things to improve on. And I’ve learned something every practice and every game, tricks of the trade.

I was in Dallas with L.P. (veteran long snapper L.P. Ladouceur), talking to him, he’d tell me some things. And I could tell he’s played for a long time. Just little nuisances. He can see something happening before it happens, so he can adjust.

For me, it’s trying to get to that point. I’m trying to set these two up for success (pointing to McManus’ and punter Riley Dixon’s lockers). It all starts with the snap and it’s my job to set them up.

It’s a strange position you play. Nobody notices you, until they do. Arizona Cardinals rookie long snapper Kameron Canaday was low on a snap in Week 1 and they missed a would-be game-winning field goal. Is it a different kind of stress?

For all three of us, it is (kicker, punter, snapper). You get one chance at it. Some people are surprised when they find out what I do and they feel bad they don’t know my name. And I tell them, in my position, if you don’t know my name, that’s usually a good thing.

People back home will ask, “Do you talk to Mr. (John) Elway? Do you know him?” I just try to stay out of the light. It’s a good thing if I’m out there and nobody knows my name. It’s a little bit of stress, but there’s stress on everybody here. You just handle the position. I’ve done it long enough to understand that. You cope with it. And you use it to fuel you. It can motivate you to do your job every time.

Teaching high school one day, playing in the NFL the next. That’s a unique leap.

When I got called for the workout here, I was just finishing up my student-teaching. I had accepted a full-time teaching position for this year back in Iowa City. I love teaching. I’ll teach at some point in my life, whether it’s 10 years from now or whenever it is.

I subbed two years in the Iowa City school district. It’s always fun subbing because I would take phone calls during class sometimes. And the kids by that point knew what was going on, my trying to get in the NFL. I’d come back in the room and they’d ask, “What team was it?!” They’d always ask if it was their favorite team. Up to that point, it was always my wife or somebody else on the phone. And the kids would be super disappointed. I still talk to a lot of the teachers at the school where I student-taught, Regina High in Iowa City.

Coming out of college, I had my degree in science education. And all I needed to get licensed was to finish my student teaching. But they do that at the very end of your degree. And when I came out of college, I kind of knew I might have a chance in the NFL. So I put off the student-teaching because Andy Schulze, who was the long snapper before me at Iowa, he tried training for the NFL and student-teaching at the same time, and it was way too much. So I put it off.

Two years ago, I focused on football. Last year, I still focused on it, but I was getting married and I need to think about my family and get a job, so the University of Iowa worked with me on the student-teaching and how to do both. It was awesome.

Do you grade on a curve?

I was pretty tough on the kids, to be honest. When I was subbing, I had no responsibility to grade kids or anything. So for me, it was more like, let’s teach them something about life. I would bore them to death. I’d say, “OK, I see this going on in your school. Let’s talk about it after we get our work done.” And we would talk about life lessons that might help them down the road.

I felt bad for the other subs because it was so easy for me to walk into a school and say, “Hey, this is who I am, I played for the Hawks here in town and I was with the Cowboys in the NFL.” And I had their attention immediately. But I would flip it on them. I’d say, “We can talk about football, but we have to get our work done first.”

My mom was a teacher for 28 years. And right after she retired, she immediately started subbing. You teachers love teaching.

Subbing is different. You really don’t have a lot of responsibilities except to make sure nobody dies or fights each other. And you get done what work you need to get done. I taught foreign languages that I had no clue how to speak, to foods to math and language arts. All of it. Subbing is awesome. I loved it. I loved the full-time stuff too, because you get to know the students a little better.

It’s a challenge. But to literally see them learn something through a unit you put together, it’s so rewarding.