Greg Blue Q&A - 2/26/06

Complete Combine coverage

Greg Blue (S - Georgia) - Sunday, February 26, 2006:

Q: What did you weigh and measure? Blue: My height was 6-2 and my weight was 216.

Q: Are you going to do all the drills here? Blue: Yes, I'm going to do all the workouts. Q: Have you started talking to some of the teams yet? Blue: Yes, last night I had nine interviews. Q: Who were some of the teams with whom you spoke? Blue: I had St. Louis, Cincinnati, Baltimore, New York Giants. Those were some of the teams. Q: Vikings or Colts? Blue: The Vikings also. Q: What members of their staff were in the meeting? Blue: There were some members of their personnel staff. I can't remember their names. I was going straight back-to-back with a lot of teams. Q: Has anyone talked to you about playing anything other than safety? Blue: Well, one team asked me a little bit about weakside linebacker, but not too much. Mostly teams are talking about me at safety. Q: How much do you talk with Thomas Davis? Blue: We talk a lot, but mostly we don't talk about football. Sometimes, like the Combine, he gives me a couple of pointers. He just tells me what to expect. Q: To what would you attribute why there are so many University of Georgia guys in the pros and here at the Combine? Blue: I think our coaches -- we've got to give a lot of credit to the coaches who we have at Georgia. They prepare us. You want to win and they make us work hard. Plus, they recruit guys who want to work hard, that's why we've got a lot of defensive guys coming out; they're hard workers and you know they're going to fight hard for you. They're font line guys.

Q: Is it a good or a bad thing that you're labeled such a big hitter? Blue: Well, you know, I will be labeled as a big hitter because Jack Tatum, he was labeled as a big hitter and you've got a lot of big-time guys who you see on TV a lot on ESPN a lot and most of those guys are big hitters. I can cover, too, but in most of our schemes, if we get a third wide receiver in the game we're going straight to nickel, so I didn't have the opportunity to cover wide receivers like most teams did because we have a lot of good cornerbacks. In most of my tape, you probably see me in cover 2, cover 3 or man-to-man on the tight end, but I'm glad I'm considered a big hitter because that's rare. It's hard to find safeties who will put their head in every play.

Q: Do you think you're going to have to show the scouts some things here? Blue: Well, yeah. It's going to be real hard to show them I can cover here. Probably, when I get to camp that's when it's going to really show right there.

Q: What is your response to the critics who say you're not a cover guy? Blue: Well, you know, I don't really have a defense for that. Everyone has their opinion and I really don't have anything bad to say about that. I know I need to work on it myself, so they're right, too. I've got to work on that also because I haven't had much experience at it.

Q: With all the big-hitting safeties in the NFL, do you think this is a perfect time for a guy like you to be coming out? Blue: Oh yeah. It's the right time. All the big time safeties, most of them are big hitters, so you know guys who say I can't cover -- I can learn to do that -- but I know how to cover. I get my right, proper practice in, I'll be good. But I'm glad I do have the big hitter in me.

Q: Do you think going against guys like Reggie Brown and Fred Gibson helped you out? Blue: Oh yeah. Going against all the great receivers and great running backs we had at our school, that helped me out a lot. Of course, in the SEC, playing against great guys, that helped me out a lot. It won't be too big of a challenge when I get to the NFL because I've played against big, fast backs and big receivers when I was in the SEC.

Q: Did being named to several All-America teams increase the attention you were given? Blue: It was. I got put on a lot of All-America teams, but I'm known as a big hitter, so I'm going to keep on playing my style and I'm going to work on my cover skills and I'm going to work on my hitting, too, but I'm going still be me and always be a big force back there.