WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS W.Va. \u2014 Dalen Cambre caught 10 passes in a five-year career covering 63 games at Louisiana in the Sun Belt Conference.<\/p>\n
That is hard to believe when you watch the second-year wide receiver\/special teams ace make catch after catch after catch, many of them spectacular, during New York Giants training camp in West Virginia.<\/p>\n
New head coach John Harbaugh has certainly noticed the 6-foot, 192-pound Cambre, who played seven games for the Giants last season after initially making the practice squad as an undrafted free agent.<\/p>\n
\u201cI see him make a circus catch every single day,\u201d Harbaugh said. \u201cAnd not just that, he\u2019s doing all the other things. He\u2019s doing special teams. He knows what he\u2019s doing. He\u2019s running great routes. I think he\u2019s making a move. I think he\u2019s done a great job and he\u2019s got our attention.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cambre, a first-team All-American in 2024 as a special teamer, knew he would have to prove his mettle not only on special teams but as a receiver when he was signed by the Giants a season ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cComing in, I was told you have to be able to do everything,\u201d Cambre said. \u201cYou\u2019re not just going to have one guy that\u2019s strictly special teams. He\u2019s going to have to know everything. If he\u2019s a defensive guy, he\u2019s going to have to know everything on defense. He\u2019s going to have to know everything on offense. And if he is truly just a special teams guy, he\u2019s going to either be that one person on the roster or he\u2019s going to have to do everything on special teams. It\u2019s pretty rare you have just a special teams guy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cambre played 89 special teams snaps last season. He played 16 offensive snaps without a reception or a target.<\/p>\n
The 25-year-old said that with a new coaching staff this season, he feels like this is his rookie year all over again.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou go in as a rookie, and you\u2019re like, I have to show these coaches who I am because, honestly, they didn\u2019t know anything about me,\u201d Cambre said on Thursday. \u201cSo I had to show them what I could do, who I am.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then I got a new coaching staff, so it basically just started over. I told my family back home, I said, it\u2019s rookie year two for me because [of the] new coaching staff. I\u2019ve got to show them who I am, what I can do, and what I\u2019m made of.\u201d<\/p>\n
Judging from Harbaugh\u2019s comments, it is clear that Cambre has done that. Throughout the Giants\u2019 stay in West Virginia, it seems like Cambre, Odell Beckham Jr., and Braxton Berrios have separated themselves in the competition for spots at the bottom of the wide receiver depth chart.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, this receiver room, we\u2019re really, really close. We are all getting along really, really well. We all have each other\u2019s backs,\u201d Cambre said. \u201cHonestly, we\u2019re like a little family in there. It\u2019s pretty phenomenal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Except, of course, that most of them are competing for non-guaranteed roster spots.<\/p>\n
Cambre understands that despite having Harbaugh\u2019s attention, he doesn\u2019t yet have a spot on Harbaugh\u2019s season-opening 53-man roster.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt means a lot, knowing that you have, like you said, I have their attention,\u201d Cambre said. \u201cBut that\u2019s not the end of the day. You have to keep putting days together, stacking them day after day after day.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause if I were to stop now, I mean, who knows? I\u2019ve got to keep going, keep going each and every day and keep showing them what I can do, whether it be on special teams or in the receiver role.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cambre has had to make himself into a real receiver.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just been a grind each and every day. You really can\u2019t see yourself as anything else. You have to envision yourself making those plays whenever you\u2019re not practicing,\u201d Cambre said. \u201cYou have to think about it. I go crazy sitting on the couch, and I\u2019m thinking about, man, what if I do this, what if I do this? And then whenever I go to a workout, whether it be the offseason or on my own or something or before practice, and you have that opportunity, you already thought about it.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo you\u2019re going out there like, man, I already lived this in my mind. I can go do this in real life.\u201d<\/p>\n
The circus or acrobatic catch is not really something that can be directly practiced. So, how does Cambre try to prepare for moments when that is required?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s training harder than what it actually is because I do a lot of catching drills with tennis balls, one eye closed or behind a bag where you focus with one hand,\u201d Cambre said. \u201cYou just put yourself in strenuous positions to be able to make the practices and the games easy because whenever a ball\u2019s coming from way down the field, I mean, you have tons of time to move your body in ways to get to a better position to catch the ball.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhenever you\u2019re practicing at a strenuous level, those catches may seem easy, but, I mean, you\u2019ve done it. You\u2019ve repped the hard thing, so it looks and feels easy whenever it comes to you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cambre\u2019s best catch of camp came during Monday\u2019s torrential downpour, a staggering catch of a deep 50-50 ball from Jameis Winston against cornerback Korie Black. It never looked like a completion. Until Cambre caught it.<\/p>\n
Cambre broke the play down for me:<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, I had a double move and ran a terrible route. Got a lot of correction on the route I ran itself. But when I turned around and looked for the ball, the ball was in the air.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I noticed it was a little bit short. And I was thinking, man, the number one rule of a receiver is if you can\u2019t catch the ball, no one can. So I was honestly thinking, okay, I\u2019m just going to bat the ball down, live to go to second down.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd, honestly, I went to bat his hands down, hit the ball somehow, hit his hands down, and the ball just popped up. And it almost floated, like, right in my eye level. And whenever I saw that, I was like, oh, grab it. So I just grabbed it and then landed on top of him. And that\u2019s just how it went.\u201d<\/p>\n
If Cambre keeps making plays like that, the Giants are going to have a difficult time keeping him off the roster.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS W.Va. \u2014 Dalen Cambre caught 10 passes in a five-year career covering 63 games at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":967622,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2067],"tags":[7,519,1917,56,15972,2321,2469,6],"class_list":["post-967621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-giants","tag-football","tag-giants","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-giants","tag-new-york-giants-training-camp","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkgiants","tag-nfl"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/117060171442903349","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=967621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/967622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=967621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=967621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=967621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}