KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- It finally hit Dontari Poe that he's playing in the NFL when walked into the locker room at the Kansas City Chiefs' practice facility.
There were the helmets. Bright red with that arrowhead logo on the side, as shiny as a child's new ball.
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"It was like, 'Yeah,'Â " Poe said. "I'm here now."
Now it's time for him to prove he belongs. After Poe was selected 11th overall in last month's NFL draft, the pick was widely panned, given his lack of production in college at Memphis.
"My point of view is, pressure is whatever you make it, so I'm just working my hardest and doing the best I can. That's all I can do," Poe said, sweat dribbling off his forehead on a warm afternoon in Kansas City. "Whether I'm the first pick or the last pick, I'm going to go in there and give it my all."
Poe spent most of the first day of the Chiefs' three-day rookie minicamp Friday working with defensive line coach Anthony Pleasant, both of them in a far corner of a practice field adjacent to where the rest of the players were going through drills.
Poe worked mainly on getting off the ball quickly, often pushing his meaty paws into a blocking pad that Pleasant wore on his chest and sending the coach back on his heels.
"People don't know that there's a big mental part to this game, and it's a lot faster," Poe said. "You really don't do too much of this technique in college. Just trying to come in here and learn as much of the mental part as I can."
The technique he's referring to is the two-gap, something Poe did occasionally in college. The idea is that the defensive tackle takes on blockers head-on and is responsible for the gap over each of their shoulders -- thus, two gaps. The result is the defender spending most of his afternoon being pounded by the opposing offensive line.
"I sat right here and I looked him right in the eye and asked, 'You know what kind of defense we play?'Â " said Chiefs coach Romeo Crennel, who doubles as the defensive coordinator. "I said that we're going to be head-up on them and you're going to get double-teamed and all those kind of good things, but if you just make the plays you're supposed to make, you'll make plenty of plays."
Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press
