*Rookie sixth-round draft choice Korey Hall is going through his first NFL training camp, and Packers.com has been chronicling his thoughts and experiences 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 fifth installment, Hall reflects on the preseason game against Seattle, feeling some aches and pains of the physical pro game, making some corrections in his route-running on pass plays, and learning to watch film at his new position.*
I felt there were some positive things I could take out of the Seattle game. I felt I was a lot more physical in that game than I was against Pittsburgh. The coaches talked to me before the game, and that's one thing they wanted to see out of me. I had a missed assignment in that game, and it's kind of frustrating because it's something that I know and it was a miscommunication. So that kind of stuff I need to work on a little bit. But overall I thought it went pretty well.
It was unfortunate Powdrell got hurt the first play he was in. I ended up having to take all the reps. On Tuesday, Miree came back and they brought a new fullback in, so that will help take a little bit of the workload off, so that's nice.
A couple of the corrections I talked about with my coaches the next day was on my routes. I was drifting a little bit on all three of the routes I ran. I'm a flat route runner, and I can't really deepen up on that because there are guys behind me. I've been working on that this week. It's just a 2-yard route, and there's another guy behind me, so I can't drift because then one guy could guard both of us. That's the idea behind it.
Watching the film always helps, but at first it was different watching film because I'm a fullback now and not a linebacker. During OTAs and the first week I was here, automatically when you turn on the film, I'd look right at the linebacker position. Now I'm getting used to it, I'm starting to watch the fullback position, even when I watch another game, to see how the fullbacks are doing, see how they're taking on blocks, how their pad leverage is. That's the stuff I'm thinking about when I watch other games. It's interesting how fast you can change, being all about defense to all about offense.
It was great to see my parents last week. They came into town with a couple of family friends, and we all went out to dinner the night before the game, so that was nice. I think they were excited. It was a pretty cool experience for them, just watching a game at Lambeau and me being able to play in it. I was glad they were able to come. They should probably make it here again, maybe a couple of times during the season, and I think they're going to try to go to the Denver game, if everything works out for me. First things first.
This short week is tough. I'm just getting back to the point where I'm feeling a little better. I think Jacksonville is a real tough defense, and I think it's going to be tough to run the ball on these guys. We're going to have our work cut out for us. It's going to be another physical football game, and that's something I'm going to have to prepare myself for week in and week out, getting banged up a little bit.
