As rookie linebacker Mykal Walker has gone through his first Falcons training camp – a partial camp really, a half-caff soy latte of a camp as opposed to the usual good, strong cup of Joe – he has come to lean on one vet in particular.
“Foye is my biggest helper out here,” Walker said this week, speaking of the Falcons third-year linebacker Foye Oluokun.
As Walker has discovered, “Foye is such a lively guy, he’s always willing to help anybody out. We play the same position, and he’s still the first one to help me out. That goes a long way. Everyone in the building will tell you Foye, he doesn’t make mistakes. He does everything by the book. He’s a guy you definitely look up to.”
Excellent choice. For whatever it may mean to Walker’s future NFL employment, he has shown to be a good judge of character.
If there is anyone who knows how to rise from the murkiest depths of a depth chart and make a lasting impression on a team, it’s Oluokun. The sixth-round pick in 2018 out of nobody’s football factory – someplace called Yale – Oluokun is slotted now to step in for the departed De’Vondre Campbell. The Falcons are counting on someone drafted 200th overall to add significantly to his career total of 10 starts.
Similarly, Walker didn’t arrive at Flowery Branch with glory guaranteed. A fourth-rounder, he split his college days between Division II Azusa Pacific and Fresno State, a Mountain West team that was 4-8 last season.
But what is very different is the way he’ll have to go about earning a place on the Falcons roster in these ridiculous times.
Where Oluokun, a safety at Yale, had minicamps, offseason OTAs, a more traditional training camp and exhibition games to prove himself, Walker has had none of those usual exposures because of the coronavirus limitations. Everything has been condensed and squeezed to try to prepare for an opening game that is only three weeks away. Evaluating potential is doubly difficult in such an environment, given the very practical need to prepare for the now.
Of the challenges these days facing later-round draftees and free agents, the caste he once belonged to, Oluokun said, “Going through the circumstances now, they’re not able to get as many eyes on them. Every little thing they do is important now. One thing I realized early was that everything you do as a rookie is evaluated. Even as a vet, they’re always watching you. So, you have to see what’s important and keep focusing on those things.”
As he saw it, Walker first considered it most important to get as familiar with the Falcons’ defensive playbook as he would his own diary. That kind of study he could do on his own and through the various chat sessions between players and coaches this summer.
Then, Part II, the hardest part: “Earn the players’ trust, it goes a long way if your teammates trust you,” Walker said.
For Oluokun, in the more “normal” 2018, he earned it the old-fashioned way. He kept making plays and being in the right place, on time, on special teams and on defense. He graded out high in his first exhibition game against the New York Jets. He later suffered a foot injury against Jacksonville and returned to the game briefly even though the injury was serious enough to cost him the rest of the preseason.
“They liked the grit, they didn’t know I had that much grit from Yale, even though that’s all we preached there,” Oluokun said. “I was able to do whatever to make the team, and I think they liked that a lot because they told me they liked that a lot. I kept building from there, building the coaches trust in me as much as possible.”
With no exhibition games, and only 14 practice sessions in pads before the opener, the Falcons are attempting to re-create opportunities as best they can for a new wave of players to demonstrate their abilities and their toughness.
“We’ve devoted extra practice reps each day to make sure we are creating those moments,” Falcons coach Dan Quinn said. “We are creating those moments at practice to add to them so that we get those evaluations.”
Said Walker, “Any opportunity you get, three or four reps a day to get up on a guy, you have to take advantage of that. Own your strengths.” To that end, he already bagged interceptions during Tuesday’s and Thursday’s practices.
This one young player trying to stand out under difficult circumstances has had limited occasion to run with the first-team defense in practice. Whatever the situation he’s put in, Walker’s drawing on the wisdom of experience, both past and present.
In his room at the training facility he has posted the words his late father, a former lineman at Fresno State who guided his son to the game, always told him: “Don’t Be Average!”
On the field, he’s keeping his ears open to advice that might help him navigate such uncertain terrain.
“The biggest thing is consistency. Anybody can walk out there and do it one day, but do it the next day and the next day,” Walker said. “The best advice I’ve gotten from the vets is if you make a mistake, don’t worry about it, go to the next play. Just don’t make that same mistake again.”
When Walker talks about his training-camp experience, he employs various voices he’s heard on the field. Seems the guy really listens and retains.
“One thing (linebackers coach Aden Durde) taught me is make the plays you’re supposed to make because you know your stuff. But to get recognized, make the plays you’re not supposed to make.”
And: “Debo (linebacker Deion Jones) says they’re expecting you to play, so you got to get up to speed. If I’m out here running with the 1s, and they trust me to put me out here with the 1s, I got to know my stuff. There is no time for excuses.”
It would be easy to sink into excuse-making, Walker said. Easy to alibi out with all the preparation he has missed because of the pandemic. “But,” he said, “at the end of the day if you’re out here, you gotta go.”
Few outside the closed circle of Falcons coaches ever will see Walker at work between here and the presumptive start of the season Sept. 13. There are no practices open to the public and no exhibition games from which to witness what is always the best kind of training-camp story: the revelation of young talent.
If he is going to make the climb from third-day draft pick to final roster, if he is going to make a dream real as Oluokun and hundreds of others like him have done in more receptive years, there is precious little time left.
Walker has a plan for the next three weeks, if only it is enough:
“I’ve proven I know the playbook. I’ve proven I can run plays efficiently. Now it’s the little things. Like if they say I’m drifting on my drop or need to get faster on the break (on the ball) – clean up little things that. It doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it might add up to a big deal.”
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