With Rare Traits, Ento Finding Home After Position Switch
GREEN BAY, Wis. – Kabion Ento dreamed of making it to the NFL. As a receiver, though, it probably wasn’t going to happen.
A junior-college transfer who landed at Colorado, Ento caught eight passes in 2016, was a healthy redshirt in 2017 and capped his career with 12 catches in 2018. Twenty catches in three years of major-college football? That’s not a great resume.
A player with underwhelming stats might get a shot with great testing numbers. Ento didn’t really have those, either. His 41 1/2-inch vertical leap was outstanding but receivers who stand 6-foot-1 with a 40-yard time of 4.54 seconds are a dime a dozen.
While receivers with his physical traits are common, they’re rare at cornerback. So, Ento switched gears. Before Colorado’s pro day, he split his training between receiver and cornerback. Word quickly spread in the scouting community that Ento was willing to change positions.
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“I did wide receiver and corner drills, and whatever a team wanted from me – receiver or corner – I was willing to do,” Ento said on Tuesday. “I’m happy to be a DB. I really kind of did want to be a DB. But, yeah, it was whatever gave me a shot to be in this league, I was willing to do.”
After going undrafted, about a dozen teams were interested – a split between receiver and cornerback. One team even liked him at both spots. Ento and his agent, Daniel MacNeil, agreed there was more upside at cornerback. Among the teams that were intrigued by a position switch were the Green Bay Packers, who signed him to the standard three-year deal and handed him a $2,500 signing bonus.
With that, a player who hadn’t played defense since being an all-state cornerback at Dollarway High School in Pine Bluff, Ark., was suddenly covering some of the best receivers on the planet.
“It might sound a little weird, I felt like a DB when I stepped into the building. That’s because I had to,” he said. “I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t step into the building saying, ‘You know, I’m a wide receiver covering you all.’ As good as that sounds, I wasn’t a wide receiver anymore. So, it felt like it as soon as I stepped into the building and that’s because I had to realize I am a DB now.”
The Packers were intrigued even more during a rookie training camp in which Ento used his height and leaping ability to make a handful of eye-catching breakups. So, Ento spent his rookie season on Green Bay’s practice squad, with the hope that he could develop his game and make the roster in 2020. Instead, during a punt-coverage drill at camp last summer, he suffered a Jones fracture in a foot. He had surgery and his season was over.
“Last year, it was tough being hurt but I was still in the building, so I could still get better,” Ento said. “It was a big mental thing – watch film, get in the meetings, just learning all the calls, trying to learn as many calls as I can. It was mental. Whatever they had me doing physically that I couldn’t do on my foot, I did that, too. It was a big jump for me mentally. I still had a great time, even though I was hurt just because I was able to be in the building, able to be around the guys. My motto was ‘still in the building.’”
Ento is back and has picked up where he left off during his rookie camp. Having spent the month between the offseason practices and the start of training camp with a coach with several NFL defensive back clients, Ento broke up two passes during Saturday’s Family Night, added another on Monday and was in superb coverage to prevent a touchdown pass on an extended play on Tuesday.
Now, the next step is to turn those plays into game-changing plays.
“He did make a couple good plays,” defensive backs coach Jerry Gray said a day after Family Night. “He’s competing for a spot on this team. The biggest thing we’ve got to keep him doing is going forward. Instead of getting the PBU, let’s start intercepting the ball. Let’s start doing those things, and that’s going to separate you from guys that may have gotten drafted. To me, coming in, you played wide receiver, has great ball skills, now go catch the ball. But you’ve got to knock the ball down first before you start intercepting.”
While Ento remains a work in progress, he has what can’t be coached: an imposing combination of height, length and jumping ability. He’s shown repeatedly that it’s a fruitless endeavor to throw the ball over him.
“Learning how to do everything backward” was the biggest challenge, Ento said. “Literally. Everybody’s used to walking forward [but] just trying to learn how to do the same technique over and over and over again going backward and making sure my eyes are good. As a receiver, you’re used to running a route and, as soon as you run your route, you make your break and you look at the quarterback. I can’t do that anymore. That’s something I had to fix. When a receiver makes a break, I have to break to the receiver. My coach said, ‘The quarterback ain’t throwing you the ball.’ That was the biggest thing – trying to get the technique down, and I’m still trying to get the technique down, I’m still fixing my eyes, just whatever it takes. But I’m pretty competitive so I feel like that’s what’s been helping me a lot.”
