FourierSeries
Experienced Starter w/First Big Contract
- Joined
- Jan 21, 2013
- Messages
- 6,859
- Reaction score
- 8,386
The recent seventh-round draft pick looked like anything but a late-round selection during the Patriots organized team activities and minicamp. Roberts not only earned reps with the starters, but when he was going up against Tom Brady, he made several plays that flashed back to his college career.
Mention Roberts to Marshall defensive coordinator Chuck Heater and he’ll instantly tell you about the unwavering confidence.
“He had a swag about him and was always confident,” Heater said. “A cool customer, so to speak. And you would like to have that personality in your corner because you’re going to make some plays but won’t make every one of them. You’ve got to be able to get back to the next play, and he had a real ability to forget about the play before and get right back to the next play. He made a lot of football plays for us. That was a great quality, the confidence that he played with.”
When you’re playing on an island, you need to be confident. Last season, Heater moved the Marshall secondary away from Roberts. Typically, he’d be by himself with the safeties on the other side of the field. With his elite athleticism, it worked.
He finished the season with just one interception, but his 17 pass breakups were tied for the second-most in Division I football. Roberts led the Thundering Herd's secondary, which was aptly nicknamed the "No-Fly Zone." Marshall let up an average of only 196.9 passing yards a game, the 23rd-best mark in Division I. Only eight Division I defenses gave up fewer yards per pass attempt.
“For us, in games, there were times when we tilted the coverage completely away from him and he was just one-on-one. He just had to make a play,” Heater said. “There were numerous times this season where it was just him and that guy. You either make the play or don’t make the play and he would make the play just about every time. We were able to load our coverage one direction because of his ability to cover one-on-one. That was about every game.”
During OTAs and minicamp, that was seen in spurts as Roberts deflected multiple passes from Brady and Jimmy Garoppolo. Take a look at his pro day numbers and you get a glimpse at what kind of athlete this cornerback really is.
Roberts didn’t get invited to the NFL Combine, but at the Marshall pro day he shined. He finished with a 4.38 40-yard dash, a 6.66 3-cone drill and an 11-foot 1-inch broad jump, and put up 23 reps of a 225-pound bench press. Had he put up those numbers at the Combine, he would have been second among all corerbacks in the 40, 3-cone drill, broad jump and bench press. His 39-inch vertical leap would have been him sixth-best.
Heater saw NFL scouts come to Marshall almost every day, and he still doesn’t understand how Roberts fell all the way to the seventh round of the draft.
http://www.providencejournal.com/article/20150717/SPORTS/150719320/13988?Start=2
