GREEN BAY, Wis. -- John Cooper has seen Green Bay Packers cornerback Quinten Rollins do it time and again. He can’t tell you how many times he’s watched Rollins break on a pass, intercept it and take it the other way.
“Here’s the thing,” Cooper says as he begins a lengthy description of his former player. “He had unbelievable instincts. Great feet. Terrific athlete. Strong motor. Could really move.”
And then Cooper paused for a moment.
“His weakness was shooting the ball,” he said in a telephone interview this week.
Oh yeah, Cooper coached Rollins in basketball, not football, at Miami (Ohio) University.
Yet the description of what Rollins did for four years on the basketball court practically mirrors what he did against the St. Louis Rams at Lambeau Field on Sunday, when the rookie second-round pick intercepted the first two passes of his NFL career -- one of which he returned 45 yards for a touchdown.
Rollins finished his career second on Miami’s all-time steals list behind only former NBA veteran Ron Harper. It wasn’t until after his four-year hoops career that he returned to football, a game he hadn’t played competitively since high school.
Yet Cooper knew all along that his point guard’s athletic future, if he wanted to make it to the top, was in football. He said a Baltimore Ravens scout called him during Rollins’ junior year asking about football. How the scout even knew about Rollins, Cooper had no idea.
Rollins wasn’t the first basketball player Cooper coached who transitioned successfully to football. When he was an assistant at South Carolina in the late 1990s, one of his former players, Brian Scott, went on to play receiver for the Gamecocks football team. And then when he was an assistant at Oregon, Jordan Kent, the son of then-Ducks basketball coach Ernie Kent, played both basketball and football. The younger Kent, who like Rollins was a defensive standout in basketball, became a sixth-round NFL draft pick of the Seattle Seahawks as a receiver in 2007.
“He’s one of those guys that you knew his athleticism transferred,” Cooper said of Rollins. “And both of those other guys were good football players, but it wasn’t the same athleticism as Q. With him, you knew.”
In his lone year of college football, Rollins was the Mid-American Conference defensive player of the year thanks to seven interceptions in a 12-game season. That one year was enough for the Packers to make him the 62nd overall player picked in the draft.
“I think his college experience as far as playing basketball and playing [football] the fifth year speaks to his approach,” Packers coach Mike McCarthy said. “It’s never been too big for him. He’s been comfortable from the first day he stepped out on the field.”
Rollins won’t be the only former MAC basketball player at Lambeau Field on Sunday. It’s possible he could end covering the other one, San Diego Chargers tight end Antonio Gates (who played only basketball at Kent State).
“I think he might have me in the box-out game because he’s used to being down low in the post, and I’m more on the perimeter,” Rollins said. “But it would be fun. Two MAC guys. If I do get the chance to line up across from him, it would be fun.”
Cooper isn’t so sure Gates would be able to box out his guy.
“He was a guy that can go up in traffic with the big boys and grab a ball,” Cooper said. “You saw on tape his instincts -- because we do a lot of run and jump, intercept, create turnovers -- and we still have tape of him closing on balls.”
Rollins admitted this week there’s not much room in the NBA for a 5-foot-11, pass-first point guard with a suspect jumper.
“But I definitely feel like I could’ve played overseas,” Rollins said.
Cooper and the rest of the basketball team at Miami watched Sunday’s game against the Rams and saw Rollins’ interceptions. They were impressed but not surprised.
“Yeah, I saw the interceptions and everything,” Cooper said. “I’m so happy for him."
However, Cooper couldn’t hang up the phone without asking for a message to be delivered to Rollins.
“You can put in there that we’re a little disappointed in his Lambeau Leap,” Cooper said. “We’re a little disappointed that he didn’t hop up on that thing.”