Meet the Cubs: Jonte Green

6.26 (#196): Jonte Green, CB, New Mexico St.

Florida is one of the most prominent football states in the nation. Some of the best high school football is played there, some of the best college football is played there, and every other college swings through the peninsula to harvest some of the annual bumper crop of talent.

When a 6’-0”, 184-pound kid from football factory Lakewood (Green is the ninth alumnus to be drafted) with all-district honors at tailback and cornerback qualifies for the Florida state track championships in the 100-meter, 4x100 and 4x400 relays, the football world stands up and takes notice . . .

. . . unless his name is Jonte Green.

 Rivals.com rated Green a two-star recruit. I didn’t find a recruit profile for him on Scout.com at all. He didn’t even make the Tampa Bay Times’ annual Top 25 of the Bay [Area] list.

Green ended up signing with South Carolina’s Benedict College, a member of the D-II Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. I don’t know if he had eligibility problems, or if he just wasn’t rated as a prospect. Either way, at Benedict Green’s size, speed and ability stood out. He racked up 41 tackles (16 solo), 4 INTs, 2 passes defensed and a sack.

Yes, for those with sharp eyes and keen minds, Atlanta's Stillman College plays in the same conference. Future Detroit Lions Sammie Hill and Jonte Green faced one another on November 10th, 2007. Hill had 3 solo tackles, 5 assists and a sack, while Green had three solos. For the record: Stillman beat Benedict 35-13.

After Green's excellent true freshman performance he received a D-I offer, from New Mexico State, and committed on February 4th, 2009. After transferring, he redshirted a season.

As a redshirt sophomore, Green took over. In his first career D-I start, vs. Idaho, he racked up 7 tackles and a pass defensed. Ultimately, Green had the fourth-most tackles on the team, racking up 74, and 8 passes defensed, in New Mexico’s 13 games. Green’s junior season: started 12 games, notched 76 tackles (ranked fourth on the team) and 8 passes defensed.

You might be noticing a pattern here: a lot of tackles, some passes defensed, and no interceptions. I’d be tempted to say it’s because the other cornerback, Packers 2011 4th-rounder Davon House, was hogging them all. But Aggie opponents, you’d think, would want throw away from House, who was first-team All-WAC both seasons he started alongside Green, and pick on Green.

But sure enough, when House left, Green’s senior season as the #1 corner saw his statistics skyrocket. He got his only D-I interception, and 15 passes defensed, to go with his usual fourth-best-on-the-team 64 tackles. For his standout campaign, he was named Second Team All-WAC.

Unfortunately, Green once again went unnoticed. Apparently a 5'-11 1/4", 191-pound corner who started three years in the WAC  and starred in Florida high school track (and competed in track at Benedict) doesn’t merit a combine invite. But Green’s Pro Day made up for it: he cut an average 4.41 40-yard dash, which would have tied him for second-best at the Combine. According to Justin Rogers at Mlive.com, though, Green thinks he can run faster.

Actually, his Pro Day results concern as much as they intrigue. His 3-cone drill (7.26) and 20-yard shuttle (4.31) times are definitely on the high end; Green may have straight-line speed but lack the agility and change-of-direction needed to cover downfield at the NFL level.

Let's see what the experts think:

ESPN's Scouts, Inc. graded Green as a 30 overall:

What he brings: Green has excellent range in coverage and he flashed above-average coverage skills, but he's too inconsistent at this point and he needs to get stronger to matchup with bigger receivers.

SI.com graded Green a 1.81, just below their 1.98 maximum for "Free Agent": "Player who will make a 60 or 80 man roster."

Positives: Athletic cornerback who's displayed a variety of skill in his game. Plays with an aggressive nature, works hard to defend the run and makes a lot of tackles up the field. Keeps the action in front of him, gets a nice jump on the throw and displays a good move to the pass. Can burst to the ball out of his plant and works to make plays. Solid return specialist who sets up blocks, finds the running lanes and quickly gets through them.

Negatives: Does not consistently play to his 40 time or show a burst. Loses opponents, blows assignments and does a lot of trailing down the field. Struggles staying with receivers out of breaks.

Analysis: Green is a size/speed prospect who flashed ability the past three years yet has shown little consistency in his ball skills. Best in zone coverage, he's a prospect who must earn his wage on special teams.

Pro Football Weekly's take on Green contains an interesting wrinkle: apparently Green participated in New Mexico's Pro Day as a junior, and he was both smaller (5'-10 3/4", 182 pounds) and slower (4.45) just a year before.

Summary: Three-year starter with outstanding timed speed and range, though his inconsistent play, poor instincts and suspect football character suppress his draft value. Could require simple assignments and needs to get stronger and adopt a more professional approach to the game in order to stick.

CBSSports.com's Dane Brugler didn't give Green a grade, but did have useful notes:

Strengths: Good starting experience as a three-year starter and good career production (30 pass break-ups). Good size/speed blend with good height and length to match up and the speed to stay with receivers. Aggressive in run support and attacks the action, not waiting for it. Quick read/react skills to plant-and-go when the play is in front of him. Toughness isn't a question. Full-go type of player and doesn't play half-speed or take plays off.

Weaknesses: Has room to get stronger and needs to add some more bulk. Plays flat-footed in his backpedal and is often a step too late, relying on his speed to catch up. Smaller hands and has only 2 career interceptions. Needs to do a better job wrapping and not just hitting. Streaky instincts and doesn't always play smart, needs to do a better job trusting his eyes. Didn't face elite competition week-in and week-out. Tight-hipped and doesn't look as natural flipping his body to turn and run downfield.

New Era Scouting didn’t have a profile for Green, nor did he crack their cornerback rankings.

Here I sit, broken hearted. I looked for YouTube Highlight Reels of Jonte Green and all I found were interviews and press conferences.

Conclusion

In some ways, Jonte Green is the archetypal Lions draft pick: starting caliber tools, potential to be a major contributor, big question marks about him ever hitting that upside. But rather than those question marks coming from injuries or character or college system or college competition, the questions are about his football instincts.

Generally, The Grandmaster & Co. prefer players with high football IQ, but generally such players aren’t hanging around in the sixth round when they’re nigh-on six feet cornerbacks with legit 4.40 speed.

As a prospect, he reminds me quite a bit of Stanley Wilson, the Lions’ 2005 third-rounder. Wilson was also 5’-11”, also about 190 pounds, also a track star. Wilson set Stanford records in the 100- and 200-meter dash, and he cut a blazing 4.36 40-yard time at the Combine. The biggest difference between Wilson and Green is Wilson’s Stanford-quality academic background and Pac-10 pedigree.

At the time, I wondered if Wilson wasn’t better suited to playing safety; just like Green his reaction skills were much better with the play in front of him than flipping his hips and running downfield. I thought Wilson would be a great zone/Tampa 2 corner, but he never caught on.

Green, like all Lions cornerbacks, will have every opportunity to earn playing time this season. All he has to is go out on the Allen Park field, and take the opportunity to finally catch everyone’s attention.

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An Open Cover Letter to the NFL, Re: Refereeing Opportunity

To Commissioner Roger Goodell, VP of Officiating Carl Johnson, and all relevant parties of the National Football League:

It has come to public attention you have locked out NFL officials in the course of your collective bargaining. This is, of course, your legal right in order to obtain a fair labor agreement for the coming years.

However, given the extreme specialization of the field, it's not surprising that, per Mike Freeman of CBSSports.com, you're now reportedly scouting the ranks of retired, lower-division college and semi-pro officials to backfill in case of a prolonged work stoppage.

Your organization has rightly placed a strong public emphasis on the health and safety of its on-field employees. But to achieve this, you've asked officials to enforce a wide array of new regulations of on-field actions and techniques.

To turn that great responsibility over to "officials whose window of opportunity for advancement has pretty much closed but who have the ability to work higher levels but just got overlooked" doesn't resonate with your public message of safeguarding the lives and well-being of today's players.

Of course, the most-qualified, most competent candidates are the current NFL officials, and the officials attached to top-tier college conferences. By definition, you won't be able to find candidates who don't represent a significant drop-off in ability, experience or fitness. So, to stave off the coming storm of public opinion, I have a suggestion:

Sign me up.

In the tradition of George Plimpton, why not let a football writer don the tapered stripes of an NFL official? Why not let the public see exactly how difficult, strenuous and exacting the NFL's officiating standards are? Why not let an outsider chronicle the journey of preparation, testing and grading that all NFL refs go through?

Why not help the fans understand that refs aren't "blind," "crazy," "idiots," on the payroll of the other club or on the take from Vegas every time they kick a call—or get a tough call right against the home team?

I'm exceptionally well-qualified to be an unqualified participatory journalist. I've repeatedly called on the NFL to explain the lack of consistency on subjective calls like holding and face-masking. I've repeatedly called on the NFL to simplify, and improve enforcement of, the NFL Playing Rules and Casebook (which I've read all the way from the bit about what font the yard markers have to be painted in to the zillions of "Accepted Rulings" in the back).

I'm ready to put my money where my mouth is.

Messrs. Goodell and Johnson, this is a win-win scenario for you and the league. Not only would you have the opportunity to educate both myself and the public on the world-class standards you hold your officials to, you'll also gain leverage in your negotiations as the public applies pressure to the officials to keep replacement referees, like myself, off the field.

The most likely outcome, of course, is that I'd never take the field. During the last officials' work stoppage, in 2001, replacement refs oversaw just one week of preseason action before an agreement was reached. If history repeats itself, I'll be able to convey all of the above without ever having to blow a whistle in anger.

I deeply appreciate your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Ty Schalter

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Idle Hands Are the Devil’s Car Keys: An Oppressive Lions Summer

The blazing heat of the summer sun’s rays drill through me; the sweltering blanket of humidity smothers everything. Scorched grass crunches underfoot as I mop sweat off my brow with sweat from my arm. The air is pregnant with steamy moisture while plants lay dead from lack of water. Everywhere, there is radiant heat. Everywhere, there is blinding light.

Everywhere but the blue bonfire.

With a grunt, I drop the handles of the wheelbarrow I rolled here. Shielding my eyes with my hand, I take stock: a decent-sized flame flickers languidly on the ashes of what was recently a towering pillar of fire. A few empty mugs lay empty on the ground, along with party cups and paper plates and somebody’s Lions snapback. The rack of wood is almost bare; one keg is leaking cider.

I sigh. Time to get to work.

As Tom Leyden of WXYZ first reported, Aaron Berry was arrested on suspicion of DUI, amongst other charges. That makes for Detroit Lions arrests this offseason, by far the highest total in the NFL and so now I guess they are officially the New Bengals, a morally bankrupt group of thugs drunkenly rampaging across America, the example set from the team president on down.

Everything I know about the NFL and human behavior tells me this can’t be a systemic thing. The Lions aren’t coaching their players to go out and smoke weed and drive drunk and escape from the cops. The Lions, an organization which had the fewest arrests in the NFL from 2000-2011, didn’t suddenly become a wretched hive of scum and villainy.

Let’s look at the  Vikings’ Love Boat incident. Certain Vikings players had been annually organizing evenings of debauchery on private boats. It culminated in seventeen players flying in women of leisure from around the country and doing all sorts of ridiculous things with them during a booze-soaked rager, in full view of horrified boat staff and crew.

That, clearly, was a team thing. That was a systemic problem. That was a culture of lawlessness and criminality. That, also, was a winning team with a perennial Top Ten offense during their 2005 bye week—which magnifies both the deviousness of the behavior and the total and complete lack of effect it had on their job.

The Lions’ arrests are individual incidents. Mikel Leshoure, with friends in southwest Michigan. Nick Fairley, back home in Alabama. Aaron Berry, after participating in Lesean McCoy's charity softball game. There’s absolutely no connection between any of these player’s bad decisions—except who signs their paychecks.

It's time for some talking points. MGoBlog super-ego discussion mode, engage:

So what, are you saying this is okay?

Absolutely not. These young men have made some awful decisions that have put their own lives at risk in a metaphorical way, and others’ lives at risk in a literal way. It has to stop, and in fact it had to stop several incidents ago. It is UNACCEPTABLE in the grand tradition of being angry on the Internet.

So what should the Lions do to stop it?

There's nothing they can do to stop it. They can send them to counseling or training, read everyone on the roster the riot act, punish the guilty with fines and/or suspensions, cut the offenders off the team or any combination of the above. But as Terry Foster did a brilliant job of explaining, the Lions can’t just cut someone for getting a DUI; that sets a precedent they can’t possibly uphold.

Foster’s plan of aggressive testimonials (possibly combined with the NFLPA’s ride-share service) might be the most effective option, but none of that will guarantee any of the Lions’ young players won’t make a mistake.

Are the Lions the new Bengals?

No, the Lions aren't the new Bengals. The Bengals intentionally gambled on character and injury risks because they refused to shell out money for full-time scouts. They drafted on name recognition, and kept up with this strategy despite it repeatedly biting them in the butt.

The Lions' brass haven’t been seeking out character risks, but they may have had overinflated confidence in their locker-room culture. As I wrote for Bleacher Report, the Lions’ current leadership has made a habit of swinging for the fences on picks, drafting guys with the most talent and potential over mediocre guys with higher floors.

Going forward, they’re going to have to be more careful about drafting guys with these kind of issues in their background, but that’s about it.

So are the Lions going to suck now?

No, absolutely not.

Many have jabbed at the organization for the leadership on drinking and driving coming from the top—but they’re getting it exactly backwards. Tom Lewand was fantastic at his job before he got pulled over after a golf outing, and is still fantastic at his job.

If you’ve ever been to a golf outing, or involved in corporate golf in any way, knows they often end with a boozy parade of people who are really good at their jobs suckin’ it up and driving home. As I tweeted on the day of Berry’s arrest, how many sales managers are going to drive from Happy Hour to the golf club, and on the way call into the Huge Show and rant about the “thugs” now wearing Honolulu Blue?

No, no, clearly the talking heads at ESPN have it right: the Lions are going to miss the playoffs because DUIs, and the Bears are going in their stead because they signed Brandon Marshall, who has a rap sheet three iPads long but whatever. Obviously, the general ne’er-do-well-ness of Mikel Leshoure riding dirty in the back seat will directly correlate with being less good at football, while Marshall having played with Cutler before means they’re sure to make the playoffs, despite Marshall being a human time bomb back then, too.

Super-ego mode, disengage.

To reiterate: This is not okay. Lions players have to stop breaking the law. But what happens with these players in their personal lives from this point forward is not something we can, or should, have control over. Nothing will come of us proclaiming or declaring anything. They’ll be watched, they’ll be helped, they may be punished, and they may get treatment. Meanwhile, they’ll to do their jobs as best they can.

Ultimately, that’s how this story ends: with football. Once football starts, we’ll stop paying attention to these young men and the mistakes they’re making. We could sit around and blow a lot of hot air about whether or not football is really important, and how athletes are ceaselessly worshipped and given carte blanche, and how awful it is that these kids will get to go right on plying their trade like nothing happened.

But the only reason we’re talking about the arrests is because of football: the unending amount of attention we pay to it, and the huge pedestal we put it on. Nick Fairley getting arrested is the subject of national sport punditry and bloviating for a solid week, not because people care about Nick Fairley, gifted youth on a rocky path to community pillardom—or even the theoretical victims he’s lucky don’t exist—but because it might, or might not, affect the Detroit Lions.

Let's take it one step further: the reason the Lions’ arrests have been the subject of SO MUCH hot air and spilled in and battered keyboards is because we have to talk about football all the time, and if Lions DUIs is the only thing happening then we’ll just talk Lions DUIs until the next thing happens (in this case, it was the release of the Freeh report on the Penn State horrificness).

This all feeds off a gross, mucky instinct that sports fans (and, I fear, everyone) has: the desire to BE ANGRY all the time, to get up on a soapbox and rant and rave about how everyone else is doing it wrong and people these days have no humanity left and everything’s going to hell in a handbasket all the time. It’s a competitive RAGEFEST 24x7x365 to see who can be the first to be most angry and the most defiant and the most condemnificating. Every morsel of news gets thrown in the great whirling, threshing maw and it gets shredded and re-shredded and pulverised over and over and over until Deadspin or ESPN or whoever throws in the next hunk of meat.

I don't understand what we get out of this, except maybe the temporary emotional boost of feeling like we are RIGHT, in contrast to their WRONG. But as Michael Schottey drove home in a criminally underread piece, many of us have an awful lot of almost-skeletons in our closet on this issue, and we should stop and think about that before we throw our next beloved sports idol into the Rage Combine.

Meanwhile, I have to take my own advice. I’ve got a bunch of mugs to wash, trash to pick up, and cider to brew, and I’ve barely started chopping this wood.

I'm off to channel this energy into something productive: my axe.

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