Just wondering, after watching Ryan Clark drop a pass that was in his hands.
This is something I’ve wondered for years… These guys have played football all of their lives. They have great speed. They are athletic. I presume they have hand-eye coordination. But almost all of them have hands of iron when a football comes near them. Why?
It can’t be because they dont catch a bunch of balls in practice. If that would help, every cornerback in the NFL would be catching 100 balls a day. And I know th conventional wisdom says that if they could catch, they’d be WR’s.
But we are talking about a simple thing here… Relatively… Catching a pass. I would think that they would be able to pull in at least 50% of the balls that hit them in the hands or the numbers.
I’m not even talking about passes that are contested, being stripped, etc. I’m talking about a pass that if they don’t catch it, no one does.
Really? Try it. It’s easy enough in a backyard game with your friends (and there are a lot of drops even there). But in a game with a ball coming at the speed a pro QB can throw it? Not as much.
Wrong questions. It’s a question of economics. What would help cornerbacks more? Practicing their catching or practicing pass defense?
Sure, having them catch 100 balls a day would make them better at catching balls. But that comes at the cost of practicing route-running or evaluating/identifying offensive patterns or studying film.
It’s the same for most any job. You can have somebody practice a secondary skill all day, but it will come at the cost of them doing their primary job.
A related football skill is QBs learning to slide. You can have them spend time practicing their slides, or you can have them practice everything else. Dedicated drills take time away from all that other stuff that is much more important.
And I don’t think it’s a joke. There are plenty of RBs who drop passes. Even a few WRs with mediocre pass catching skills. Cornerbacks who can catch would have been converted to WR a long time before hitting the nfl.
Already answered, but more explanation: Any DB who had good hands would have been converted to a WR early in his career (likely as early as high school) because a) it’s a more critical role on the team, b) it’s more glory for the individual, and c) it pays more money if/when you go pro.
So both the coaching staff and the player have a vested interest in converting the player from DB to WR if he has good hands. In short: self-selection.
It’s definitely not true that guys like Peterson, Revis, Bailey and Woodson have had professional careers as defensive players because they couldn’t hack it at wide receiver, which is where “if a corner could catch he’d be a receiver” leads you. Their ball skills are fine. They’re cornerbacks because that’s what they are. I think things may be starting to move in a different direction the last few years, but historically I think cornerback has been valued at least as highly, if not more so, than wide receiver at the NFL level. I’m not sure where this apparent consensus that it’s the other way around is coming from.
I think the real answer to the question is that they aren’t necessarily so bad at catching. Some are better than others, and some are pretty bad. But they’re being asked to do something very different from what a wide receiver is doing, so it’s not an entirely fair comparison. Defensive backs are trying to do a lot of things that are pretty athletically awkward. I didn’t see the Clark play, and obviously if the ball’s right at you it should be within your power to catch it, but most of the time that a DB has a play on a ball, it’s in a situation a receiver would never be in.
Totally agree, Jimmy. A lot of corners have excellent hands, but their speed and ability to shut down their side of the field make them extremely valuable. Champ Bailey was an excellent receiver at Georgia. Sometimes height is a factor, as well.
In general, I totally reject the idea that all DBs have terrible hands. I’ve seen plenty of them make circus catches over the years.
It’s partially because the DBs are generally reacting to the pass instead of expecting it in a certain place from the start of the play. It’s like when a pass is tipped and then it bounces RIGHT off a defender’s hands and you wonder why he couldn’t hold on to it. When you’re not immediately expecting it to come in your direction, it’s really hard to catch.
Catching a pass thrown by an NFL quarterback is simple in the same way that hitting a pitched baseball is simple. The fact that some guys make it look easy does not mean that it is. If you or I played catch with an NFL QB throwing at game speed, we’d be lucky to hold onto one in five.
Yes, and if anyone was making that kind of absolute statement, they’d be wrong.
But as a generalization, it’s very true. On every team I ever played on at peewee and high school, it’s one of the things they do on day one: everybody that wants to play receiver runs a few patterns and gets the ball thrown to them. If you don’t catch enough, they send you over to the defense.
I think it’s important to emphasize your last point. Defensive backs don’t expect the ball to come to them. They have to go to the ball, and a perfect throw is one that allows the receiver a chance to catch the pass while the DB has no shot at it.
Defensive backs are also generally taught to knock the ball down or hit the receiver, a much safer play than going for the interception and missing. As already pointed out, their time is much better spent practicing coverage, tackling, and batting down the ball than catching it considering the number of legitimate interception chances each DB gets per game.
The list of interception records shows how difficult it is to get a lot of interceptions, so having a DB with good hands is a bonus more than a DB that drops balls is a detriment.
This is most of the answer. The receiver is focused on only two things- his route and the ball. He runs his route and expects the ball at a certain time- he’s not particularly worried about the other players around him. He knows (or hopes) the QB will only throw to him if he’s open, so he doesn’t have to track the DB on him.
The DB, on the other hand, is focused on his zone and/or his man. He can’t spend much attention on the ball, because then the man he’s on or who’s in his zone will get right by him and get wide open. And it’s hard to catch a football if you’re not focused on it.
Catching the ball is literally the last thing they are thinking about. If they go for the interception too much they will get beat bad. They are trying to keep up with the receiver, run backwards, play zone, watch the quarterback, get their hands up, chuck the receiver (but not too far downfield and not too high), watch out for picks, try not to get faked out on fake moves, time their move perfectly so as not to get the penalty. Doing all that while playing by rules that are increasingly in favor of the receiver. Then maybe a couple times a game, bam there is a pass they can catch. And you wonder why they aren’t better?
One more thing that might go to show how much it matters to practice receiving is the video of Chris Carter and Keyshawn Johnson having a one-handed catching contest in the studio before a game.
Now, Carter’s hands may just be plain better than Johnson’s, but I think it’s pretty apparent from this video that Carter must have practiced it way more and/or practiced it more effectively than Johnson.
I have. A real NFL Quarterback, who was a Division I college QB when I caught some passes from him. And I can say a few things from my personal experience. Without a doubt my hands hurt from my game of “catch” with him, and they hurt for quite a while after we were done. The ball was zipped at me at NFL QB speeds, but I didn’t have any DB trying to break up the pass, hit, or tackle me. I also didn’t have gloves on (big mistake). However, what I learned was this… Catching a ball with your hands and bringing it into your chest is not all that hard. And if I had gloves, I could have done it both longer and better. But I ran routes from anywhere between 10 and 25 yards, just for fun, mind you, and I asked him to throw it as he would in a game. He had one of the most powerful arms I ever had the pleasure to play catch with. But make no mistake… I caught many more than I dropped. I have big hands, and I was a very good athlete in college and my 20’s, so I may not be the average guy out there. Still, I never saw me as anything special either, especially when it came to pass catching. Maybe I had much better than average hand-eye coordination than most people at that time.
Sure, you have to get used to the velocity and the sting that comes from the velocity. And as long as you don’t jam a finger, you are alright.
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I agree with you that a DB would do better at practicing DB skills at practice, as it is a much better use of his time. But I think being able to catch is right up there for DB’s on the skill set. (I know this isn’t reality, but it should be.). Couldn’t they take 50 passes at the end of practice from one of those automated passing machines? Just to get more comfortable with the whole process?
I had the pleasure watching Revis in college, and I don’t think he would be a journeyman receiver. He would be much better than average, at least in my opinion. But in reading some of the answers here, I will concede that perhaps we are talking about two different skill sets entirely.
As I’ve stated, I’ve actually done this, so I am not just pulling this question out of thin air. It was my experience at catching passes with an NFL QB that always made me wonder about this question. And IMHO, hitting a baseball is much harder than catching a football.
I have the same question about RB’s too, and how some simply can’t catch a pass out of the backfield.
Maybe Loach has a point about how they are concentrating on so many other things, catching it isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. But we are talking about professional athletes, and what basically is a reflex action. Perhaps I’m just not seeing what is so obvious to you all.
As for the guy that dropped the ball in the Steeler game, I may have misidentified the guy. Sorry about that.
