Less than an hour into the first practice of his first NFL season, Bears safety Dillon Thieneman screwed up.
During a rookie minicamp drill Friday, Thieneman and a cornerback both ran into the flat to cover a receiver. The 25th pick in the draft should have backpedaled toward the curl route instead.
“Then we redid it,” he said. “I got it right.”
It was Thieneman’s first mistake. It won’t be his last. What he learns along the way, though, is crucial to a team that used a first-round pick on, of all things, a safety.
“He has a nose for the football. …” coach Ben Johnson said. “When the ball’s in the air, he’s got fantastic acceleration to get to that catch point. And then when he gets there, he arrives with some violent intentions.”
It will be months before Thieneman’s allowed to actually hit someone. He spent the two-day rookie minicamp learning the basics of the Bears’ defensive system.
“Start from the very bottom,” he said. “Just [coaches] teaching everything a little bit, little by little. And then just keep building.”
Thieneman knows the team will rely on his versatility. He’s playing strong safety, where he’s close to the line of scrimmage and more apt to help in run defense, while cross-training for veteran Coby Bryant’s free safety spot. The Bears could play Thieneman in either the slot or at outside cornerback, too.
That’s what Oregon did, moving him all over the field in his one year with the Ducks after he transferred from Purdue. It was that versatility that convinced the Bears to use their top pick on a safety, a position that’s often an afterthought. They felt similarly about Bryant’s varied skillset; they gave him $40 million over three years to lure him away from the Seahawks.
Defensive coordinator Dennis Allen knows what a good safety looks like.
Since Allen started coaching in the NFL in 2002, 28 safeties have made at least three Pro Bowls. Six of them played for Allen at some point in their careers: Tyrann Mathieu, Roman Harper and Darren Sharper with the Saints; Charles Woodson with the Raiders; Brian Dawkins with the Broncos; and Kevin Byard with the Bears. Woodson and Dawkins, who both played for Allen late in their careers, are each members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
They were all intelligent, Allen said. On Saturday, he began rattling off the kinds of coverages safeties have to play — the curl/flat route that tripped up Thieneman on Friday, a hook/curl, the middle third, deep quarter and deep half. Safeties are responsible for pre-snap communication, too, to make sure the team is ready to fit the run and cover the pass.
“Those guys have to be really smart,” Allen said. “And it’s not just book smart, it’s being able to think and process … and make really good decisions. And I think that’s what all the great ones really do.”
Allen understands the league-wide trope that safeties can be found later in the draft — sometimes, he supposes, on-field intelligence doesn’t jump off the film the way raw physical skills do. Still, the best ones usually get drafted high — of the six elite safeties Allen has coached, one was drafted in Round 1, three in Round 2 and two in Round 3.
Time will tell whether Thieneman can join that list. Allen is encouraged by his production in college — he had a whopping 306 tackles and eight interceptions in three years.
“You can see his athleticism on the tape, but I just think the biggest thing was he found his way around the ball a lot,” Allen said. “To be able to do that, there has to be some intelligence about him, and there has to be some instincts about him.”