*Rookie sixth-round draft choice Korey Hall is going through his first NFL training camp, and Packers.com will chronicle his thoughts and experiences throughout the next several weeks in this training camp diary.
Hall was a linebacker at Boise State but is being converted to fullback by the Packers. He's also being looked at as a potential regular on all the special teams units, where he excelled as a college player.
In this second installment, Hall discusses the mental challenges he faces, working with running backs coach Edgar Bennett, and the upcoming Family Night scrimmage.*
I feel like the first week of camp is going pretty well for me. Each day is a new challenge picking up the new install, and going out to try to perfect my technique at fullback. For me, every day when I go out there, I'm not really like a rookie anymore at fullback, but I'm still trying to get my technique down and try to perfect everything that I'm doing out there. I feel like after the first week, it's kind of flown by. Well, part of me feels like that, and part of me feels like it's the longest six days of my life.
For me, just the type of person I am, I remember the bad plays more than the good plays. I've had some good catches and some good blocks, but most of the things I remember are plays I messed up, and I keep them in the back of my mind just so I won't make the same mistake twice. That's usually the type of stuff I'm thinking about when I'm out there on the field. 'Have I run this play, and if I have, did I do well or did I mess it up last time? What do I need to do to correct it this time?'
I think the day off on Wednesday came at the right time. After the first three or four days is when you start to get bruised up a bit and your muscles are sore, and you're not used to running around with pads on and hitting each other that much. We could all give our legs a rest, but even more than physically, mentally take a break too and have the afternoon off. I just ended up studying a little bit, looking at my playbook, and then I slept and recuperated to get ready for the rest of the week.
Edgar Bennett, he's a good dude. As a player, you can really relate to him, just because he knows where we're at. He went through the same struggles for a long time here. He knows exactly what we're going through and how we feel. And he knows if we come off the field and tell him something, he understands what we're talking about.
The most important thing he tells us is when you go out there, don't get too tensed up, don't lose focus. Try to stay calm out there and think about everything you've studied and try to understand what's going on around you. Don't get overexcited where you forget everything.
Family Night is going to be exciting. I've never played in the stadium before, and I've heard that's awesome, and it's going to be packed. I think it will be a good test for everybody to see where we're at as a football team and for me, to use it as an evaluation tool and see what I need to work on. I just want to go out and try not to have any missed assignments, and try to play solid. I'm not really looking to do anything spectacular, but that's kind of the life of the fullback. You get your block, and if there are any balls thrown to you, you catch them and do what you can with them. That's what they want out of us.
