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Best set of hands on the team: Former BHSU standout makes way to Green Bay
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FarkGREEN BAY — When Brett Favre huddles the offense and hastily barks in his Mississippi accent, “Tear wide right 98 strike, on two” or “West trips trouble deuce divide double, on one,” his teammates are expected to know precisely what the veteran Green Bay Packers quarterback means.
But for players who come to the NFL from a small college, such as backup tight end Zac Alcorn, mastering such lingo while digesting the complexity of an NFL offense is a challenge he has never faced before.
“Mentally, I wasn’t ready,” Alcorn said, his tiny voice a peculiar match for his 6-foot-4, 265-pound muscular frame. “I don’t even think I had a playbook in college. If I did, I never cracked it open once — I just knew it. Here, if you don’t open it, you’re in big trouble.”
The 26-year-old Alcorn, now entering his second season with the Packers, explains why.
“There’s hundreds of plays and thousands of different ways to run them,” he said while spreading his arms wide to show the enormity of the playbook. “Eight inches thick. I’m not even joking, man. It’s huge: 25 pounds.”
Although the transition from college football to the pros poses difficulties for all NFL hopefuls, the move from a small college as opposed to an NCAA Division I school is undoubtedly more challenging.
Larger schools, such as the University of Wisconsin, recruit the nation’s top high school athletes and provide their football players with many opportunities small colleges can’t afford: better competition, better coaching, better facilities and the best chance for recognition from NFL scouts — not to mention superior scholarship possibilities.
Alcorn latched on with the Packers last year after playing at Black Hills State University, a tiny school in South Dakota which belongs to the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics. He caught a touchdown in preseason last year but saw limited action during the regular season.
This year, injuries to other tight ends and a decline in the production of former Pro Bowl selection Bubba Franks have cleared the path to a roster spot and perhaps a third-string job for Alcorn, who has battled through hellacious foot blisters.
“Ever since I can remember having dreams or aspirations, it’s been to play in the NFL,” Alcorn said. “Even when I was older, people probably laughed at me, but I still told them I was going to do it.”
The path less traveled
Their laughter is understandable, even though both Alcorn’s grandfather and uncle had tryouts for several NFL teams.
That’s because the likelihood of an NAIA athlete landing a job as an NFL player is slightly greater than the odds of being struck by lightning. In the hierarchy of college football, the NAIA rests at the bottom of the totem pole. Those involved profess its level of competition to be comparable to that of an NCAA Division III school such as UW-River Falls.
A look at the 2006 Packers’ final 53-man roster is indicative of just how difficult it is for small-college athletes to find jobs as NFL players.
Besides punter Jon Ryan, who attended college in Canada, 47 of the 52 remaining Packers players attended colleges with NCAA Division I football programs. Four others made the jump from the NCAA Division II ranks. Alcorn was the lone representative from outside that power structure.
At any given time, approximately 30 NAIA alums are on active NFL rosters, according to NAIA manager of sports information Steve Wilson, who pointed out that running back DeDe Dorsey of Lindenwood University earned a Super Bowl ring last season while on injured reserve with the Indianapolis Colts.
But with nearly 1,700 active players spread between 32 NFL teams, that means that less than 2 percent of NFL players hail from NAIA colleges.
Even though Alcorn has already beaten the odds, having played in six NFL games last season — mostly on special teams — he definitely feels the additional stresses of coming from an NAIA school.
“From a small-college kid aspect, I’ve got the pressure of not having very many opportunities to make plays,” he said. “You’ve always got that in the back of your head saying, ‘Don’t drop the ball, don’t drop the ball,’ when you should be saying, ‘I got this one.’”
Alcorn signed a contract as an undrafted free agent with the Packers in 2006 but initally failed to make the team. However, the Packers liked his athleticism and work ethic and retained him as a practice squad member. It was only late in the season, after starting tight end David Martin was injured, that Alcorn was promoted to the active roster.
Once he joined the team, Alcorn found himself facing another challenge: How to make it out of what’s known amongst Packers as “The Green Mile” — an auxiliary locker room that draws its name from the movie about death row inmates, because it is separated from the main locker room by a long strand of green carpet.
“Back in The Green Mile,” Alcorn explained, “a lot of people are going through the same struggles you are.”
Alcorn’s promotion
Alcorn has since worked his way into the main locker room thanks to determination and the recent broken fibula suffered by Tory Humphrey, against whom Alcorn was competing for a roster spot. Alcorn is currently listed third on the Packers depth chart at tight end behind Donald Lee and Bubba Franks. Rookies Clark Harris and former UW-La Crosse basketball star Joe Werner are also competing at tight end.
Alcorn said that players who come from large colleges are generally given more room for error — and rightfully so — because they’ve already proven themselves at big-time colleges against big-time competition. But small-college players such as Alcorn, who had an outstanding senior season at Black Hills State, aren’t given that long a leash because their highlights and statistics came playing with and against less-talented competition.
“When I was a tight end in college, most of the time I was physically stronger than the guy across from me,” said Alcorn, who squats 490 pounds, benches 355 pounds, and runs the 40-yard dash in 4.6 seconds. “No matter what, I could just man-handle him if I got my hands on him. Now, that’s not going to happen, whatsoever.”
Alcorn says he was “blessed to be one of the most talented athletes” while playing in the NAIA, but he was taken aback by the physical prowess of the big-school athletes he was competing against for an NFL job.
“When I got to the Packers, everybody was talented,” he said. “It’s just crazy how fast people are, too. That’s the biggest difference — the speed and athletic ability.”
But competing against players with big-college athletic ability and learning playbooks are only a few of the obstacles small-college guys face.
According to Alcorn, the biggest hurdle has been mastering his blocking skills, especially considering Black Hills State didn’t even have a tight ends coach — something commonplace at Division I universities.
Packers offensive coordinator Joe Philbin discussed what he calls Alcorn’s small-college “learning curve,” especially as it pertains to reading and reacting to shifting defenses.
“Our tight end position here, there’s a lot of movement,” Philbin said. “You start one place, you jump to another, you pass protect. This type of run-blocking system is a little different for him. In college, he always went out for routes.”
The middle of nowhere
Alcorn’s transition to the NFL is even more impressive when his roots are traced.
Alcorn grew up on a farm in a sparsely populated area in northwestern Nebraska, where the nearest town, Hay Springs, boasts a mere 652 residents. The closest NFL franchise, the Denver Broncos, is five hours away. And that’s the only team within a 600-mile radius.
He drove 35 miles to high school in Chadron — with about 5,300 residents, it’s the biggest town in a 100-mile radius — so he could have a better chance at playing college football. When attending Black Hills State, Alcorn lived in the biggest city of his life up to that point: Spearfish with its 8,000-some inhabitants.
Despite his small town roots, Alcorn’s high school football coach in Chadron, Dick Stein, said he knew all along that Alcorn had a shot of reaching the pros.
“Even though our area isn’t known for producing NFL players, I knew Zac was special,” Stein said. “In practice, and even in games, we’d all be standing there with our mouths open saying, ‘How did he catch that?’”
Once Alcorn earned a job with Green Bay, he and his wife, Jennifer, and his two children, Justus, 3, and Jada, 1, had to adjust to living in a city with more than 100,000 residents.
“It’s huge, actually, to me,” Alcorn said. “Which is weird because all the other players, their biggest thing they don’t like about Green Bay is that it’s so small. But if I went to a place like New York, I’d be lost. I’d still be lost.”
Alcorn noted with enthusiasm the difference between playing at Black Hills State’s Lyle Hare Stadium, which seats 4,200 spectators and playing in the much larger Lambeau Field, which seats around 70,000.
“First of all, there’s been more people at our outdoor practices in Green Bay during training camp than there ever have been at a game for me,” Alcorn said.
Unlike Alcorn, for a player coming from an NCAA Division I college such as the University of Tennessee, for example, whose Neyland Stadium seats more than 104,000, the transition to playing in an NFL stadium would be quite smooth.
And Alcorn says when his Packer teammates are arguing over whose alma mater has the superior football team, he knows Black Hills State isn’t even in the same league.
“Every once in a while they start talking, ‘My college is going to work your college,’ and I can’t even get in the conversation,” he said with a laugh.
Cool Hands Zac
Alcorn’s two biggest assets are his hands, which he held in the air to display their surprisingly average size. Yet they’ve helped Alcorn earn an enviable reputation with the Packers.
On more than one occasion Green Bay coach Mike McCarthy has publicly singled out Alcorn as having the best hands on the team. And backup quarterback Aaron Rodgers, whose face lit up when asked about Alcorn, couldn’t agree more.
“Zac Alcorn may have the best hands on the team,” Rodgers said. “And you can ask just about anybody, and they’ll probably tell you the same answer.”
Rodgers said that Alcorn, with whom he played extensively on the scout team, has made him look good on more than one occasion by snagging poorly thrown balls, adding that the injury to Humphrey’s left leg shouldn’t be a cause for concern.
“As tough as it is to see Tory go down like he did, I feel like we’re still in a good position with Bubba, Donald Lee and Zac because Zac’s a solid player,” Rodgers said.
But Alcorn, good hands and all, said catching the football from professional quarterbacks such as Rodgers and Favre is much more difficult than catching a pass from the quarterbacks at Black Hills State.
“The first couple that I caught, I had my hands in there, but I couldn’t believe how fast it gets to your hands,” he said, forming a diamond target with his thumbs and index fingers as he talked.
He added about Favre, “I wish they’d stop talking about how old he’s getting too, because I think it’s making him throw it harder.”
While the velocity on Favre’s passes are unlikely to decrease, the future Hall of Famer agreed that Alcorn has “great hands.” Favre said Alcorn has “potential” and “has the ability to make the plays we’re asking our tight ends to make.”
Favre credits Alcorn’s hard work on the scout team last season for propelling him onto the depth chart.
“Each week, he made play after play after play,” Favre explained. “And that’s hard to do when no one knows your name, when no one’s putting you in the game, and you’re just out there giving people a look.”
And, according to Favre, that may well pay off for Alcorn.
“If you continue to do that, then eventually they got to give you a chance, whether it’s here or somewhere else,” Favre said. “And I think he’s done everything he needs to do to get noticed, except do it in a real game. And until we give him that chance, we won’t know.”
After all, as Favre pointed out, the recipe for NFL stardom doesn’t always include playing for a large university.
“You know, he came from a small school, which Jerry Rice did too,” Favre said, referring to the Hall of Fame receiver, who played at Division I-A Mississippi Valley State. “And he had a pretty good career.”
Green Bay Packers tight end Zac Alcorn (49) makes a catch during Organized Team Activities at Ray Nitschke Field in Green Bay on May 31. Alcorn, who is third on the Packers' depth chart, played for Black Hills State. He signed a contract with Green Bay in 2006. (Evan Siegle/Green Bay Press-Gazette)
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