How Baseball Helped Make Playing Cornerback Easier for Giants Rookie Colton Hood

Colton Hood just wants the ball.

And don’t tell him he can’t have it just because he’s a cornerback and not a receiver. No, the New York Giants’ second-round draft pick, a cornerback by trade, knows he’s being paid to come in, snatch the ball away from opposing offenses, and giftwrap as short a field as possible for the Giants’ offense.

Kind of like what he did during Saturday’s rookie minicamp practice. Hood, on one of his downfield coverages, saw an opportunity, stepped up, and seized the moment by picking off a pass and returning it for a Pick-6.

“Yeah, we were just in Cover 2,” Hood said. “My guy went in and went short. I had the running back to my flat. I just broke on the ball and made a play.”

A pass breakup would have been just as good, but Hood took it a step further.

“I took it from him,” he said with a grin.  

That is the kind of play the Giants are hoping to see a lot more of from the former Tennessee Vol, whom head coach John Harbaugh said after the draft he expects to compete for a starting job.

That is also the kind of play that the Giants' defensive backfield just didn’t make enough of last season. Of their nine interceptions, which tied them for 23rd in the league, only four were made by a cornerback, with slot cornerback Dru Phillips being the only one of the three players at his position to have multiple picks.

Hood, who played one season each at Auburn, Colorado, and Tennessee, only managed three interceptions over his college career, two of those for 105 during his stint with the Buffaloes.

The thing about Hood is that there’s no panic in his game, and for the McDonaugh, Georgia native, there’s a very good reason why he looks like such a natural.

“I think a lot of DBs panic just because they're not great at tracking the ball,” he said. “I played baseball, played center field, so tracking a football is 10,000 times easier than tracking a baseball. I wouldn't say it's easy, but it's something that I've been doing my whole life. So, it comes naturally to me.”

The head coach approves

“Loved him in the press–he was at the press corner. He was playing press out there with the other corners. He looked really good," Harbaugh said after Saturday's practice.

“You saw him make a couple of plays. How about the interception in two minutes? That was a nice play. He was good. He was good and diligent the whole time.”

And in case anyone was wondering, Hood can also offer up quality run support.

“Tackling is a mentality,” he said. “Just having that mentality to want to go out there and dominate in every facet of the game definitely helped me.”

What’s really going to help Hood mesh in the Giants' defense is that he’s being asked to do something that he loves to do.

“They want us to be up in guys' faces,” he said with a smile. “That's what I like to do. Just being able to be cerebral. It's not very hard, but you can see how complex it is together.

“So how can I affect offenses and have them be tripping up when the play comes? I'm really excited to continue to learn and do what I need to do.”

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