Packer Central

Here’s Anthony Belton’s Juicy Story About Halftime Turnaround

Green Bay Packers rookie Anthony Belton had a dismal first half against the Colts. There would be no sour grapes, though. Instead, a halftime snack helped change the course of his day.
Bill Huber|
Green Bay Packers offensive linemen Anthony Belton blocks Zach Tom at training camp.
Green Bay Packers offensive linemen Anthony Belton blocks Zach Tom at training camp. | Tork Mason / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

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Green Bay Packers

GREEN BAY, Wis. – In flag football, cookies can brighten the day of a kid who dropped a pass in the end zone. Apparently, it’s not much different in professional football.

Green Bay Packers rookie second-round draft pick Anthony Belton had a horrendous first half during Saturday’s preseason game against the Indianapolis Colts. He was penalized five times, got his quarterback hit and got yelled at by his head coach.

Fortunately for Belton, Rasheed Walker had a snack.

“Everybody was saying something to him,” Walker said after Monday’s practice. “I feel like he got the message. I just gave him a snack to kind of clear his mind.”

It worked. Belton played much better after halftime. His penalty-free second half helped the Packers score three consecutive touchdowns to rally to a 23-19 victory.

Were clementines the solution?

“It might be, man. It might be,” Belton said after Tuesday’s practice. “Hopefully, it don’t ever get like that again, but we’re going to keep eating them at halftime.”

Belton appreciated the support of Walker, who’s dealing with his own challenge as he battles Jordan Morgan for the starting job at left tackle, a role he’s held down the last two seasons.

For Belton, the juicy citrus was the perfect tonic against the Colts.

“You just got to keep going,” he said. “It’s a game of four quarters. I had a bad first half, but I can’t just sit there and pout and be mad about it. I got to keep going.”

A halftime clementine was a fun jumping-off point to a conversation about Belton’s second-half turnaround. However, what Belton did was serious stuff. It would be easy to get down. That’s human nature. It would be easy to lose confidence. That’s the life of a rookie.

When the going got tough, Belton got going. Belton isn’t just physically strong. It turns out he’s mentally strong, too.

“That’s what come with playing this game,” he said. “It’s a game of four quarters. Sh** going to happen, but I wasn’t expecting sh** like that to happen. But still, you’ve got to overcome it because you can’t let it affect the rest [of the game]. Thirty more minutes of ball, that’s a lot of ball. Two quarters, that’s a lot of ball.”

Belton’s bounce-back performance could be important because he could have an important role on the team. The Packers essentially have six starters with Walker, Morgan, Aaron Banks, Elgton Jenkins, Sean Rhyan and Zach Tom. That makes Belton the next man up if there are a couple injuries.

“I feel like that was good for him as a young player,” Walker said. “Preseason, different things you have to focus on, like your alignment and making smarter decisions on the football field, but the second half he played a lot more cleaner.

“I feel like it was an opportunity just to learn for him. Granted, in a real game, it probably would’ve been amplified 10 times more, but it’s preseason, so that’s where you get all your little issues and kinks out, so I feel like it was good for him.”

With Week 2 of the preseason complete, Belton has an NFL-high seven penalties. That’s as many as the rest of Green Bay’s linemen combined. Nobody else in the league has more than four.

Some penalties, such as holding, are a price of doing business for an NFL lineman. However, the pre-snap penalties and the unnecessary-roughness infraction for pushing a Colts defender in the back after the play are inexcusable. Belton knows there’s no sugarcoating that reality.

“It’s more about being under control,” he said. “So, under control, good body position – that’s the biggest thing. Being physical is never a problem. It’s the approach (and) just being under control. That’s my biggest thing, especially run game – bending at the waist, stomping my feet and leaning on people, that’s something you can’t do at this level. I was able to get away with it in college, but it ain’t going to work here, so I just got to be under control, keep fighting and have good body position.”

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Bill Huber
BILL HUBER

Bill Huber, who has covered the Green Bay Packers since 2008, is the publisher of Packers On SI, a Sports Illustrated channel. E-mail: packwriter2002@yahoo.com History: Huber took over Packer Central in August 2019. Twitter: https://twitter.com/BillHuberNFL Background: Huber graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he played on the football team, in 1995. He worked in newspapers in Reedsburg, Wisconsin Dells and Shawano before working at The Green Bay News-Chronicle and Green Bay Press-Gazette from 1998 through 2008. With The News-Chronicle, he won several awards for his commentaries and page design. In 2008, he took over as editor of Packer Report Magazine, which was founded by Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Nitschke, and PackerReport.com. In 2019, he took over the new Sports Illustrated site Packer Central, which he has grown into one of the largest sites in the Sports Illustrated Media Group.