All of these things are true. But by all accounts, he's a student of the game, so he probably won't make the same mistake twice. That's honestly more important than his speed or athleticism. He LEARNS.

Aaron,

Joe Whitt Jr. dropped an even bigger bomb shell before the first game of the season, that was over looked by everyone, saying that Shields would be a superstar in the league once he got coached up.

Joe Whitt, Jr. can't keep his praise for this kid contained. I don't know if I love it, or if it's inappropriate and possibly damaging to SHield's psyche by way of over-confidence. Who knows.

Gotta root for Sam Shields. Gotta admit, watching locker room interviews with Sam, he seems to be confident, yet modest about where he's at in his development and the fact that it will continue to take hard work and dedication to learn the position.

BTW, I noticed that Shields got caught peeking on that play as it happened. This is something that Shields has to learn to curtail, as it has been the source of most of his breakdowns throughout the season thus far. He's still not completely comfortable in man coverage and learning when to take the visual cues from the WR to look for the ball, and his propensity to peek into the backfield (or STARE as the case may be) affirms that. Could be he relies to much on his ability to make up lost ground due to his speed, or he's just getting greedy and looking for the big play, trying to emulate the vet Woodson, who, of course, is far more experienced..But I put my money on it being a comfort issue. He relies on the peek to know where the ball is going.

BTW, Aaron, Corey: What's up with the time stamp? Just realized it's listing the time as 2 hours ahead of Central.. in other words, it's 10:53 am here in WI, but the time stamp will say I posted at 12:53 pm? That's even fast for your Eastern time.

We all knew QBs were going to be taking ajantage of him and not one person would say hed play as well as he has before the season started. Heck hes probally doing alot better than CBs who were drafted in the early rounds this year.

We'll see how he stands up this weekend. It's a big game. If he comes through this one unscathed I'll be impressed.

"what offensive coordinator and quarterback wouldn't look at an undrafted rookie playing nickelback behind Charles Woodson and Tramon Williams and think "Target - Acquired"?"

In a lot of other backfields, teams wouldn't be picking on Shields. But as you said, between the reigning DPOY, the current best CB in the league, and the undrafted rookie, who do you pick on?

I wrote this after the Eagles game:

"Sam Shields is going to get exposed by good quarterbacks. It pains me to say that. Nobody has been in his corner as much as I have, but let me tell you, if I was an Eagles fan, I’d be ripping Andy Reid and both quarterbacks for not going after him. Not until the fourth quarter did they even look Shields’ way and get him into positions where he didn’t have safety help. Watching the game again and focusing on the Packers secondary, it was kind of surreal. They threw at Tramon Williams, they threw at Charles Woodson, they threw at Nick Collins. It was comical. The Eagles did the Packers a big favor."

Since that time, teams have indeed tested Shields, and as we know, he has mostly passed the tests. He really hasn't been exposed that much. I'm still surprised teams haven't gone after him even more. Perhaps Atlanta will declare war on Shields.

Just to point out one of the CB's who got drafted in the first round and isn't playing as well as Shields --- Kyle Wilson of NYJ, who i actually wanted the Pack to draft. Looks like Ted knows football better than i do, big surprise.