Sometimes having it easy isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. We tend to find that out often in professional sports. So many great athletes with great size or speed struggle to transition into a league like the NFL, where almost everybody has great size or speed. They were able to get by with their natural gifts at the expense of the craft they would need at the next level to compete with those who are, finally, their physical equal.
That’s what Pittsburgh Steelers rookie TE Darnell Washington is learning in his first NFL offseason. Asked what his biggest takeaway was from his training camp experience, he said, “What I learned most is probably just how much I have to rely on my fundamentals. Some things in college I was doing just because I’m bigger or stronger than my opponent”, via the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
“Now that I get into this league, d-lines bend more at the top, so the torquing and things like that, just the little things that I learned, I’m really gonna have to rely on my footwork and hand placement, all the good stuff”, he added.
That’s not in any way to say that Washington is going to have abnormal difficulty adjusting. It just means that he’s realizing early that he’s going to have to bring more to the table than just his 6-foot-7, 260-plus pound frame and a greater degree of athleticism than that type of body usually carries with it.
There’s no doubt that he is quite a specimen but harnessing his full potential means getting him in the lab and selling him on the principles of, as head coach Mike Tomlin would say, doing the routine things routinely. Whether that’s in his blocking technique or route running, he can only be served well by not falling back on his natural advantages to get by.
There are, frankly, few players in NFL history who may have truly been able to dominate without being a student of their position. That only gets truer over time. Future Hall of Fame TE Rob Gronkowski has a reputation for being sort of oafish and not studious, but at least he had QB Tom Brady to crib off of.
For Washington, he has tight ends coach Alfredo Roberts, who has been a positive addition to the coaching staff after replacing the long-time mainstay, James Daniel. And he’s had a lot to work with in recent years. The rookie explained what Roberts has him focusing on.
“Definitely the footwork”, he said. “He just preaches that with the whole tight end group, not just me. Pad level’s one, because I’m naturally taller. Really hand placements from time to time. He’s just coaching me all around making me the best I could be”.
The first two weeks of the preseason do show that there is still work to be done, even if there is a great deal to work with. Pad level has been an issue in some close-quarters situations up against the line of scrimmage, as but one example. But he has plenty of time to work on his skills. After all, it’s his job now.
