GREEN BAY – Green Bay Packers rookie cornerback Brandon Cisse isn’t familiar enough with his team’s history to know he has an opportunity to do what a handful of other players not picked in the first round did to become household names around here.
Cisse, a second-round pick out of South Carolina, has been assigned first-team duties on defense after teammate Carrington Valentine suffered a pulled hamstring.
Suddenly, he has a chance to do what players such as Jayden Reed, Elgton Jenkins, David Bakhtiari, Corey Linsley and Tramon Williams did in their first training camps. They all slipped into starting positions and then performed so well that their coaches made them prominent players in their rookie seasons.
Like the others, Cisse has benefited from someone getting injured and is in a prime position to claim the spot as his own. The question is whether he can follow in their footsteps and become an anchor, solidifying the position for years to come.
“What a great situation for us to have him in, going against our best, going against Jordan (Love) and the other receivers out there,” coach Matt LaFleur said before practice Aug. 4. “So, he’ll just get more and more reps.”
Cisse has looked like he belongs in the starting lineup, but there is a lot of training camp left and a lot more reps against the likes of Christian Watson, who scorched him for about a 50-yard gain during one of the competitive periods of practice.
There wasn’t much Cisse could do given the play call, but Watson said it’s something he’ll learn from and figure out how to make the best of a bad situation.
“I just got him on a crosser,” Watson said. “It was really a good setup. We had a man-(coverage) beater, a little mesh (play) inside. So, he’s got to navigate the mesh, and I’m kind of just running away from it. So, we got him on that.
“But he’s been really solid. He’s been asking questions about what he can do in certain situations. He seems really comfortable with the position. I’ve been impressed in a few situations.”
It may not be a coincidence that the Packers placed Watson’s locker between Cisse’s and fellow rookie corner Domani Jackson’s. Watson is never more than a shout away if either of the two wants thoughts on how they played a certain route.
The 5-11¾, 189-pound Cisse, the seventh cornerback selected in the draft (No. 52 overall), arrived with a ton of physical talent, running the 40-yard dash in 4.46 seconds at his pro day and leaping 41 inches in the vertical jump at the combine.
He’s also raw. He didn’t start a game his first two years at North Carolina State and then left for the NFL after starting 12 games at South Carolina. He turned 21 on July 3.
“He’s very young,” general manager Brian Gutekunst said after drafting Cisse on April 24. “His best football is ahead of him. We think he’s got so much more left in the tank, not only as a player, but physically as well. He can go get bigger and stronger.”
Cisse experienced a step up in competition at South Carolina, and his success there was one of the reasons he jumped up draft boards. He played mostly man-to-man press coverage last year, which endeared him to scouts since man coverage is the litmus test for whether a cornerback can survive in the NFL.
In new coordinator Jonathan Gannon’s system, however, he’ll play a lot of “off” coverage in a three-deep zone. It will give him vision to the quarterback, which could mean an increase in interception possibilities, but there is a lot of discipline involved in playing zone, and Cisse will have to master it.
“I had the skill set to be able to do that,” Cisse said of playing press coverage at South Carolina. “I have long arms and I can run. Those are the kind of guys that can cover down at the line of scrimmage. But the more you can do, being able to play off and being able to learn different things, that makes you more complete.”
In camp’s first one-on-one drills between receivers and defensive backs, Cisse’s short-area quickness was on display. Three times, second-year pro Savion Williams tried to knock Cisse off balance with stutter steps and pivot moves, but Cisse was on top of him all three times, refusing to give up a completion.
In team drills, Gannon has used Cisse as a blitzer, and his speed is evident as he angles toward the quarterback. Despite weighing only 189 pounds, he was a capable tackler in college, but the challenge gets bigger against some of the NFL’s monster-sized running backs and receivers.
The Packers probably would love Cisse to win the starting position opposite Keisean Nixon, since it would validate their assessment of his talent. Valentine will come back at some point and may have something to say about the spot, but his tackling was a sore spot last year, and his coverage was up and down.
Free-agent signee Benjamin St-Juste is also a possibility. He’s off to a good start at camp. He has been working mostly behind Nixon, and his height (6-3) makes him an intriguing option, especially against some of the plus-sized receivers in the division like Chicago’s Rome Odunze, Detroit’s Jameson Williams and Minnesota’s Justin Jefferson and Juan Jennings.
Cisse has no problem going against bigger receivers and wants more of the 6-4 Watson because he thinks there’s a lot of benefit to facing someone that big and athletic. It didn’t turn out that well in practice Aug. 4, but that doesn’t worry Cisse.
“Obviously, his locker is right next to mine, and I can get info back from him on some of his vet moves and telling him what I’m seeing,” Cisse said. “It’s been great. Every time I go against him, he wants to kill me, and I want to go against him and try to dominate him.
“So, it makes me better.”
As for locking down the position for the season, Cisse said he’s not even thinking about that. He said there’s too much he needs to improve on to think he’s beating out anyone for a starting job.
“I look at it as an opportunity to go out there and compete,” he said. “There’s a long way to go, and I’m trying to polish up my skill set. It’s exciting. It’s a challenge every day. I’m not taking it for granted. There’s still some things I really need to clean up. But I’m getting better.”
This article originally appeared on Packers News: Packers rookie Brandon Cisse trying to dig his heels into starting spot
Reporting by Tom Silverstein, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Packers News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Tom Silverstein, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | USA TODAY Network
