Rating the defensive backs

When he was just a kid growing up in Forest, Miss., long before Rashard Anderson ever realized he could earn millions of dollars playing football, he would cradle the second-hand shotgun his father had presented him as a birthday present, crouch down in the woods behind their home and try to bend his long and lanky body behind the thick overgrowth of shrubs.

Most times Anderson, always big for his age, failed to successfully camouflage himself and so he never developed the patience required to hunt deer. Instead the young outdoorsman concentrated primarily on raccoons and rabbits and squirrels, much easier game that permitted instant gratification and needed little more than an itchy trigger finger.

"For me, patience has never been a big quality, let alone a virtue," said Anderson, a former standout defender from Jackson State and likely to be among the first cornerbacks selected in this weekend's NFL Draft. "And you've got to be patient to hunt deer, you know? Plus I was always so much bigger than the other kids, it hurt my knees to bend down for so long behind the bushes. Even if a deer came by, I'd scare him off with all the twitching and fidgeting that I did. So, no, I never bagged a deer."

More than a decade later, those same obstacles Anderson faced as a deer hunter -- no patience and way too much size -- likely will help him bag an NFL contract worth more money this year alone than he ever figured he would make in a lifetime.

Two seasons ago, after beginning his college career as a safety, Anderson convinced the Jackson State coaching staff that he should move to cornerback, where he could make more of an impact, be closer to the action and not have to exercise the degree of patience typically required in the interior secondary. The coaches, for the record, did not have to have their arms twisted behind their backs to agree to the position change.

As for a physique that once made it so difficult for Anderson to carve out niche in the underbrush, well, that also has been an element in his rise up the draft boards. Only 20 years after the average NFL cornerback stood just over 5-foot-10 and weighed about 175-180 pounds, nearly every team is seeking out the bigger player at the position. Anderson (6-2 3/8, 206) has the athletic skills and quickness to go along with his size, so now the possibility of playing safety in the NFL is just last resort.

There are less than a handful of stubborn teams who still list Anderson as a safety prospect, but of the 11 franchises surveyed this week about him, all but one regarded him as a cornerback.

For every action, there never fails to be a reaction in the NFL. So when teams like San Francisco began to incorporate bigger wide receivers into its "West Coast" style passing attack, and every other club with a similar aerial design soon followed, defensive coordinators leaguewide decided they needed more physical cornerbacks. Players who only a decade ago would have lined up at safety now are first auditioned as corners.

The old "safety first" adage, personnel directors and general managers interviewed for this draft series agreed, has become passé. In the case of any defensive back with size, it's corner first.

"First off, cornerback is the easier position to play from a mental standpoint because you simply don't have as many adjustments to make," Arizona general manager Bob Ferguson said. "If you bring in a young safety, you'd better make sure you don't overwhelm him with responsibilities. And then, just as important now, you want size on the corner. Every team out there now has at least one big receiver and you have to be able to match up with those guys. It's just the way that the game is going in this particular cycle."

In the 1997 draft, when everyone knew that Maryland defensive back Chad Scott was a certain first-round pick but no one seemed sure whether he was a safety or a corner, Pittsburgh scouts never even considered him for the former of those positions. On the Steelers board, Scott was a cornerback until he proved otherwise. It's always easier to move a player back inside, reason most scouts now, than to bring him to camp as a safety and eventually move him to corner.

"If you've got a big, athletic player who can run," said former Steelers director of football operations Tom Donahoe, "he's a corner first and a safety second. That's the rule of thumb now."

It has taken a while, of course, for the "bigger is better" philosophy that permeates the league to make its way to the secondary. But the time clearly has arrived, accelerated by the propensity of bigger and rangier wide receivers.

This year's predraft combine session two months ago reflected the trend toward the bigger wide receivers and the desperate need for cornerbacks who can physically match up with them. Of the 45 wide receivers in attendance at Indianapolis, 31 stood 6 feet or taller. Conversely, of the 34 cornerbacks there, only nine were 6 feet tall or more. And of that nine, just four figured to be selected in the first three rounds of this weekend's draft.

Little wonder that every time a scout goes on campus now and assesses a safety, he also attempts to project how that player might perform at cornerback. The perilously thin supply of big corners demands that some safeties switch positions. For Anderson, the move came two seasons ago. For others, the transition won't begin until their first NFL orientation camp within the next two weeks. But several former safety prospects already know what to expect, and many welcome the challenge of lining up on the corner.

"It's where the action is and where the money is, too," said William Bartee of Oklahoma, one of the former college safeties destined to play cornerback in the NFL. "From almost every team I met with at the combine, the first question was always the same: 'So how would you feel about playing cornerback?' Shoot, it suits me just fine. I figure I got that cornerback's mentality about me anyway. I want to be where I can make plays."

The scouts knew Bartee had the kind of size (6-1, 193) they covet at cornerback but were unsure of his quickness. But he clocked a 4.45 time at the combine on the notoriously slow surface of the RCA Dome. And even though his projected pro position on the official combine sheets read "FS," scouts immediately penciled in Bartee as a "CB" prospect. And he wasn't the only player to undergo an instant position alteration.

Tennessee's Deon Grant is a talent, but failed to impress scouts with his speed or tackling ability.(Allsport)

Former college safeties Todd Franz of Tulsa, LSU's Mark Roman, Maryland's Lewis Sanders and Kareem Larrimore of West Texas A&M all are graded now as cornerbacks.

There were some teams who felt that Tennessee safety Deon Grant, at one point the highest-ranked player at that position, might project to cornerback because of his size. But the former Vols star didn't run well in his workouts and that plan was abandoned. Ironically, the scouts who have now looked at him closely on tapes wonder if Grant, one of the real "fallers" in the draft, can even play at safety, so unimpressive is he as a tackler.

The more compelling irony, though, involves Anderson, who after proving to the skeptics that he could handle the cornerback spot, spent his combine interview time suggesting to teams that his position of preference was safety.

"Being a former high school linebacker, I'm just an aggressive guy," Anderson said. "You can be aggressive at corner, but it's a different kind of aggressive."

No matter, since Rashard Anderson is the different kind of cornerback. Bigger. Faster. And in the eyes of NFL scouts, better.