New Orleans Saints Forums - blackandgold.com - NOLA.com Saints rookie Marshon Lattimore in good hands during break before training camp

I just hope people have patience. He's going to give up big catches and TD's. Here's a great article about rookie CB struggles...

NFL Draft 2014: Why cornerbacks always have toughest rookie adjustment of any defensive position | NJ.com

This sound was strange. Eric Davis’ ears perked up to the noise, unlike anything he had ever heard before on a football field.

It was Aug. 20, 1990, and the 49ers were playing at the Broncos in a Monday night preseason game — a rematch of the previous season’s Super Bowl, which San Francisco won, 55-10.

The 49ers had drafted Davis, a cornerback, in the second round that spring, and now, in their second preseason game, he was sprinting stride for stride with a Denver wide receiver who had run a 15-yard route toward the middle of the field.

The receiver had no space. Davis blanketed him. In college, quarterbacks never threw the ball in this situation.

"There’s no way the ball is coming," Davis recalled thinking. "I have my assignment done."

Then he heard the whistling. He turned his head and saw John Elway’s pass zipping into the receiver’s hands for a completion. Elway, fitting the ball into the tightest of spaces, threw it so hard that it created that whirring sound as it spiraled through the air.

On the ground after making the tackle, Davis felt stunned and amazed — at the chutzpah, the accuracy, the speed of this throw.

"That wasn’t the last time I heard one whistle, but that was the first time," Davis said.

He realized, there on the grass at Mile High Stadium, that playing cornerback in the NFL looks, feels and even sounds so much different than college.

He realized the most challenging — and potentially intimidating — part of making a living in a cornerback’s lonely spotlight: "Your receiver is always open," he said.