To Landon Collins, the Giants’ second-year safety, all the anxiety and embarrassment of last spring’s NFL draft was worth it.
“I’d still go,” Collins said Wednesday. “Because it was always my dream to go to the draft. It was always my dream to experience all that and be almost a pick in the first round. It’s a dream come true to be accepted to that. So definitely I’d still go.”
It’s so much easier for Collins to say now than it was a year ago. These days, he’s the slimmed-down leader of the Giants’ green safety corps, a key piece of what the franchise hopes will be a revamped defense in 2016. But at this time last year, things were much much different.
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Collins was a junior coming out of Alabama at the time, and he was touted by many as the top safety available in the 2015 draft, a likely first-round pick. So when the NFL invited Collins to attend the draft in person in Chicago and sit in the league’s green room until that moment when a team chose him and he could walk across the stage, he leaped at the opportunity.
Then all 32 teams passed on Collins in the Thursday night first round. Frustrated, Collins left Chicago that night, heading home to New Orleans.
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“It was tough,” he said. “You always have that high expectations for yourself. For the guys that’s going through the draft now, (you have to) take it in stride and just be lucky you got a chance to get into this profession.”
That’s what Collins has tried to do ever since the draft day snub. While he struggled at times last season, he still managed to become the first Giants rookie defender to start a full 16-game season since defensive tackle Barry Cofield in 2006. He did that – and made a team-high 112 tackles – despite playing out-of-position, a natural strong safety who played in coverage to aid his depleted team.
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This season, he said, he’s hoping to make even more progress under second-year defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo. He spent the offseason training with former Steelers safety standout (and one-time Giant) Ryan Clark, and he showed up for the team’s voluntary minicamp weighing 217 pounds, 11 pounds lighter than his weight during last year’s NFL Scouting Combine.
“That’s was my biggest goal,” he said of the weight loss. “It’s healthy. (My body can) last longer. Better movement for my body.”
From the very start of minicamp, Collins said, he could feel the difference, both athletically and mentally. A season ago, he described his play as “timid, a little worried, second-guessing myself a lot.”
Not on Wednesday.
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“Coming into practice and playing against our ones, I felt so much faster,” he said.
That’s all critical for the Giants, because Collins is the club’s most experienced safety. The Giants failed to add a key piece to the back end of their secondary in free agency, so untested Nat Berhe, Mykkele Thompson, Cooper Taylor and Bennett Jackson will battle to start alongside Collins for a second straight year.
Collins doesn’t mind that, though, because he said the young safeties can help stabilize a “great secondary.” And he doesn’t mind what happened at last year’s draft one bit, either.
“Don’t take it as nobody wants you,” he said of the slight. “Just take it as drive and take it as motivation. Whatever team doesn’t pick you, you get to play against that team.”
