As the current rookie class transitions to the NFL, whenever that occurs, they are going to have to make several adjustments. But there’s no denying what the biggest adjustment will be.
“The speed of the game,” former NFL player Hugh Douglas told JR SportBrief. “It’s funny: The first thing that I noticed going into the NFL and the last thing that I noticed coming out of the NFL was how fast everybody moves. Even when you're on the field, if you're watching, you don't realize how fast these big guys are moving unless you're in it.”
Douglas, 48, was a first-round pick out of Central State in Wilberforce, Ohio, in 1995. The discrepancy in talent between Central State’s competition and the NFL was, well, vast.
“The first couple weeks of training camp – and I got a rookie card to show it – one of those tackles snatched me up, and I’ve been forever immortalized in a rookie card where I got my head all jacked up,” Douglas said. “He put hands me because he was just so fast. I had to adapt on the fly to the speed of the game. I had to learn how to do what they call hand-fighting on the fly because I never had to do that in college.
“Coming from a small school, I was a dominant player that dominated most of the talent that I played against,” Douglas continued. “So when I had to move up and start playing against professionals, that was the first thing that jumped out to me was the speed of the game and how fast these big people move. It was ridiculous.”