Football’s cornerbacks aim for starter positions
By Eli Smukler
April 14, 2010 9:41 p.m.
As the wide receiver across from you toes the line, you take one final, resting breath only to realize that this man literally towers over your crouching body.
All of a sudden, the ball is hiked, and your opponent takes off with long strides that seem to cover area codes. Pedaling backward, you stay balanced and on your toes.
He stops and turns on a dime. You stop, shift gears and engage.
He spins around and resumes taking mile-long steps toward the endzone, but you’re already there. Now, legs churning, chests heaving, arms outstretched, it is only you and him as two sets of eyes both grow big like saucers.
This is the life of a Pac-10 cornerback and UCLA rising redshirt sophomore Andrew Abbott plays the position with a motto.
“I’m going to cover for however long I’ve got to cover and I’m going to stay in this guy’s hip pocket for however long I’ve got to,” he said. “The people in the stands aren’t going to see that the quarterback has got all day. They’re just going to see that you’re covering (the play) and you got beat.”
In every game of the last four years, the Bruins were able to rely on All-American Alterraun Verner at cornerback. A masterful athlete, he was considered by his teammates to be a true student of the game and of that position in particular.
“Alterraun just knew how to take it from the film room to the field, how to see what a guy is doing on film and translate that onto the field,” Abbott said.
With Verner’s departure ““ most likely to the NFL ““ UCLA has wasted no time trying to fill that space.
Abbott would very much like to follow in those footsteps.
“My goal is to start,” he said. “I don’t have any other goals right now. I see myself as the underdog in this whole thing.”
He’s probably right about that, but Abbott has been getting plenty of looks for a 5-foot-10-inch walk-on, one of the few non-scholarship players listed on UCLA’s spring depth chart. Above him, though, is nothing but stiff competition.
The tallest of the Bruins’ corners is 6-foot-2-inch rising sophomore Sheldon Price. He just turned 19 years old, but the lanky kid with a big smile has the most collegiate experience of anyone at the position, starting in 11 games for the Bruins just out of high school.
That gig was supposed to go to sophomore Aaron Hester, but a fractured right fibula in the first week of the season forced him to the sidelines. After two idle years in Westwood ““ one as a redshirt and one with the injury ““ Hester is more than ready to prove his worth.
“It’s been a long time coming,” he said. “I’ve been waiting, and now I get to go out and showcase my skills. … It’s time to put it on display.”
Though Abbott and redshirt junior Courtney Viney ““ each with a single game start to his name ““ will certainly be threatening for playing time, the position is Hester and Price’s to lose. Hester is unfazed by the prospect of the two of them picking up the slack of a lost All-American.
“Vern was an excellent player, and not to take anything away from him, but I think, us two, we could be real good this year,” Hester said as Price stood next to him, nodding his head. “We’ve got the skills with the body and the mind to be two shut-down corners. So it’s pick your poison on either side.”
The big motivator for many of these players during spring practice is the fight for position on the depth chart, but the tall order awaiting all the cornerbacks at Spaulding Field wears a different color jersey. UCLA’s receiving corps is looking to improve by literal leaps and bounds this upcoming season, and the corners have to witness it every day, but Price said he likes that.
“All of them getting better is making us get better,” he said.
With no pads on Monday, the two units worked a drill where the cornerbacks had to try and stick to the wide receivers for up to 10 seconds with an unhurried quarterback.
“It definitely gets a little competitive out here,” Abbott said. “With the receivers and corners we’ve got here, all of us just like to compete. It’s like, “˜You got me on Tuesday. I’m getting you on Wednesday.'”
The Bruins have lost wideout Terrence Austin but are gaining players with some serious speed, like third-year transfer Josh Smith and rising sophomore Randall Carroll, and some serious height, like 6-foot-5-inch rising sophomore Nelson Rosario and 6-foot-4-inch soon-to-be redshirt sophomore Jerry Johnson.
Those taller pass-catchers can be awfully difficult to guard, which is why Price wants all the practice he can get.
“It’s good to experience something like that because you don’t see (6-5) receivers all the time,” Price said.
Abbott, who is seven inches shorter than Rosario according to the media guide, doesn’t put much stock into that discrepancy.
“Yea, he’s a tall kid, but … if you’re a playmaker you’re a playmaker,” he said. “With him, there are different things you’ve got to do to bring his height down. I’m talking technique-wise, you’ve got to know him and know how he runs his routes. The way I see it, when the ball’s in the air, we’re all the same height. I look at how high is that ball and I’m going to go get it.”
In fact, Verner wasn’t that tall of a guy either. And while he’s still on campus, finishing up his last classes and waiting for Draft Day, he still talks to the young UCLA corners.
“We’ve just been like sponges, taking everything from him that he brought to the game because he was so good,” Abbott said. “Why wouldn’t you want a guy like that to be your mentor or to look up to him and what he did?”
If Abbott and the rest of the corners can live up to their own high expectations, they won’t be looking upward at anyone.
