GREEN BAY, Wis. -- Who says nerds can't play football?
Remember when the Green Bay Packers drafted Brett Hundley in the fifth round and director of player personnel Eliot Wolf called him a "football nerd" who is "really smart?"
On the eve of Hundley's preseason debut in Thursday's opener at the New England Patriots, the rookie quarterback hopes his nerdiness pays off.
"He's a great kid," Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers said. "He's progressed a lot. The mental part of it is so important as a young player because once you can figure out what you're doing, then you can really begin to start reacting quicker to what you're seeing on the other side of the field. So he's done a great job of working to improve. He listens a lot. He takes a lot of notes."
Rodgers said Hundley would text him over the summer and give him his workout schedule while he prepared for training camp at UCLA, his alma mater.
"He puts a lot of time in," Rodgers said. "I don't know why he was doing this, but he was waking up at like 6 in the morning in the offseason, working out at UCLA and training and studying and stuff. It's great."
In fact, Hundley still has a set of keys to UCLA's football facility.
"I could go into the quarterback room whenever I wanted to, and I still have the key, so I can still go," he said. "I'd either study in the defensive room, just to hear them talk while I studied, or I'd study in the quarterback room. Usually nobody would be there, and I'd go home before they had meetings."
It's almost as if Hundley is trying to change the old adage that it takes three years to fully learn the West coast offense into three months. As he has said several times since the Packers drafted him, "I don't like not knowing stuff. So until I knew it, I was going to study it."
Quarterbacks coach Alex Van Pelt asks each of his players to keep detail notebooks in the meetings. He didn't have to tell Hundley how to do it. The rookie's book is filled cover to cover, double sided.
"All the quarterbacks do a great job in that regard, filling up the notebooks," Van Pelt said. "It's one after another, front and back pages, loading up the notebooks with everything that gets said in those meetings. And that's where it starts, in the meeting room. And then what you do when no one else is around, getting up and working out. I'm impressed by him, his ability to take notes and learn and retain information."
There have been signs of progress the past few days in training camp after a slow start. On Monday, Hundley got his first turn at running the two-minute drill, and he led an 11-play, 65-yard drive that he capped with a 9-yard touchdown pass to tight end Harold Spears. Hundley completed 7 of 9 passes, not including two spikes to stop the clock.
"The guy's played a lot of college football," Van Pelt said. "I think he feels comfortable in game situations, and the more familiar he becomes with the offense obviously the more success he'll have."
