Take the case of rookie cornerback Quinten Rollins, who was selected in the second round of the draft last May to fill in for Tramon Williams and Davon House, who had departed in free agency.
There are plenty of things that Rollins needed to learn to succeed at the NFL level, but the Packers had zeroed in on the one skill that he needed to improve, an attribute that is so seemingly innocuous that other teams may not even have noticed: eye control.
Rollins had a habit of peeking into the backfield to get a read on what the quarterback was doing. In college football, cornerbacks coach Joe Whitt Jr. said, players can get away with that. College quarterbacks can usually only throw effectively to one side of the field, the closest side to them, meaning defensive backs can sit back and wait for a quarterback to try to force it to the side they shouldn’t and—voila—snag an interception. Something Rollins did seven times in one season of college football.
“[But] if you use that technique here, you are going to get the ball completed on you,” Whitt said. “Your eye control is very, very important here. Once [the quarterback] gets in your blind spot, you have to change your vision and get it back to your receiver.”
This is the sort of detailed orientation that the Packers put all their new employees through. In fact, Rollins joined a secondary made up of a number of players who didn’t play defensive back very much in college. Demetri Goodson, just like Rollins himself, spent most of his college time playing basketball. Sam Shields played wide receiver. This is no accident.
“I don’t have to un-coach them,” Whitt Jr. said. “I know if they do mess up, it’s something that I taught them.”
