Packers seventh-round pick happy to go where hes wanted

Mike Spofford

GREEN BAY Seventh-round draft pick Micah Robinson was invited for a pre-draft visit by exactly one NFL team.

The Green Bay Packers.

"On my visit I was joking with the coaches, actually," Robinson said during last weekend's rookie minicamp. "I was like, 'I'm going to be back. Hopefully I'll be back.' I kind of just spoke it into existence."

It wasn't much different the year prior when Robinson, a cornerback, was looking to transfer from Furman to finish his college career where he might have a better chance to get on NFL teams' radars.

He took just one transfer-portal visit, to Tulane, and lo and behold, wound up going there, too. He did have a past connection with a key Green Wave individual, though, in defensive backs coach Rob Greene, who previously had been on the Wofford coaching staff recruiting Robinson out of Westlake High School in Atlanta.

Greene's initial efforts came up short, as Robinson chose Furman, a Southern Conference rival of Wofford's less than an hour's drive away. But the recruiting relationship paid dividends, and so did Robinson's transfer to Tulane.

Playing against a higher level of competition in the American Athletic Conference, Robinson showed he could step up and belong. He intercepted two passes, returning one for a TD, adding to his total of five INTs over his last two years at Furman.

More important, he put in a productive year of work with other older transfer defensive backs like himself, including another NFL-bound cornerback, Caleb Ransaw, who was taken in the third round by Jacksonville.

"Just being in the film room with those guys, becoming a film junkie, that's where I think I grew the most," Robinson said.

It was enough for the Packers to spend their seventh of eight draft picks on him, at No. 237 overall. Conventional wisdom said with the Packers losing multiple corners in free agency (Eric Stokes, Corey Ballentine, Robert Rochell) and uncertainty surrounding Jaire Alexander's status, that Green Bay would draft a corner much earlier than the seventh round.

That's not how the board fell, though, which is to Robinson's benefit. It creates an opportunity to be thrown into the mix with two late-round corners from last year, seventh-rounder Kalen King and sixth-rounder Kamal Hadden (originally chosen by Kansas City), along with undrafted prospect Johnathan Baldwin from UNLV, to compete for a spot on Green Bay's depth chart.

"I want to show them I can play any position, whether that's nickel or corner," said Robinson, who's 5-11, 185. "I want to play special teams. With my skill set, I want to show them they can put me anywhere on the field, and also be a low-maintenance guy. Whenever they need me, just go out there and do what I have to do."

Like most rookies, he's just glad the whole pre-draft process is over and he can get back to actual football, which he called "the easy part."

He does have one connection in the Packers' locker room as a cousin to Malik Willis. He said they are either second or third cousins on his dad's side.

In addition to seeing Willis, Robinson wanted to soak in everything he could during the rookie minicamp, from the introduction to the playbook to the Packers' culture. He got a taste of the latter back in April and, with no one else calling to bring him in, was certainly hoping for the chance to absorb more.

"I had a great visit up here with them," Robinson said. "Got to know the coaches. Got to tour the facilities. Loved everything. Loved everything about the culture. Loved everything about Green Bay. Now I'm back.

"Sometimes it only takes one. One team to believe in you. Green Bay believed in me, so I'm here now and I'm here to give everything I've got."