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Posted by: Tom Ziemer, Wisconsin State Journal
GREEN BAY — They come in a wide variety.
Go to training camps across the NFL and you'll find undrafted rookies battling against the odds for roster spots. There are those from big colleges and small ones. Some are underachievers dripping with talent, others overachievers full of desire.—
And then there's Quinn Porter, who has about as interesting of a back story as any.
"I just took another road, man," he said. "A longer road."
Porter's road to this point, at which he's chasing his NFL dreams as a running back in training camp with the Green Bay Packers, has been pretty much directly uphill.
He spent 5½ years at Stillman College, a small NCAA Division II school in Tuscaloosa, Ala. He went there as a walk-on and couldn't play his first year as a partial qualifier, instead joining the cheerleading team to stay close to football. He had to talk his way into playing running back. And, while a productive player, he wasn't a star until his senior season.
But he's been one of the surprises of camp so far for the Packers, drawing praise in particular for his toughness, quickness and instinctual running.
"I'm willing to meet the standards and expectations of this coaching staff and of the city of Green Bay," he said, "and I just want to make everybody proud and happy."
Porter, who was born in Los Angeles, had dreams of playing at Southern Cal. He sent letters and tapes to the school, but he wasn't a highly touted recruit coming out of Quartz Hill High School in northern Los Angeles County.
Instead, a friend at Porter's church who knew the dean of students at Stillman suggested the historically black college with an enrollment of about 1,100. But as a partial qualifier, he couldn't play as a freshman while he worked in the classroom to become academically eligible.
One of the most interesting parts of Porter's journey began when he was approached by two young women during orientation.
"Our conversation and everything was going cool," he said, "and then the subject of cheerleading popped up. I was like, ‘What? You want me?' "
At first skeptical, Porter then thought of the positives: He'd receive some scholarship money and be able to travel to road football games.
Porter said he used the opportunity to watch the players he'd be competing against and the coaches he'd be playing for the following season. And while he talked somewhat sheepishly when recalling how he wound up as a cheerleader, he said he doesn't regret it at all.
"I found my niche," said Porter, who acted as a stuntman, doing flips, roundoffs and back handsprings and lifting his female counterparts. "... And the following year, I was out there, I was out there trying to compete."
But it wasn't necessarily a seamless transition.
Porter redshirted the next season while practicing at wide receiver. As a redshirt freshman, he didn't play in the first four games. That, and an injury to the team's starting running back, prompted Porter to go to coach Greg Thompson and ask him for a position switch.
Thompson agreed, and the team's next practice began with a red-zone drill. Porter scored on the first three plays against the first-string defense, leading to bewildered cries of "Pom-Poms?" — the nickname his teammates had saddled him with.
Porter went on to rush for 1,541 yards over the next two-and-a-half seasons while also proving himself a viable receiving option out of the backfield and serving as the Tigers' punter as a sophomore and junior.
"Every time I got that ball, I made something happen, so that kind of put me in the position my senior year just to be the every-down back," he said. "So I just kind of worked myself up from the ground up, and I've been doing it ever since."
As a senior under new coach L.C. Cole, a former University of Wisconsin assistant, Porter led the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference with 1,247 rushing yards and ranked fifth in Division II with 138.1 yards per game.
It wasn't enough to get him drafted, but the Packers saw a player who didn't run out of bounds and had a good burst to go along with his receiving skills. Porter drew interest from several other teams after the draft, but he was sold on Green Bay.
"This was unexpected and this was a blessing," he said.
It very well could turn out to be a blessing for the Packers, too.
There's still more than two weeks left in camp and Green Bay has yet to play a preseason game — its opener is Saturday night against the Cleveland Browns at Lambeau Field — but Porter has at the very least piqued the interest of the coaching staff.
The Packers have a need for a third running back behind starter Ryan Grant and backup Brandon Jackson. And, with sixth-round pick James Starks yet to practice because of a hamstring injury, the competition has been down to Kregg Lumpkin, who made the team in 2008 but spent last season on the practice squad, and Porter.
"He is a different type of back," running backs coach Edgar Bennett said of the 6-foot, 205-pound Porter. "We always talk about each guy brings something unique to the table from our backfield, and he's certainly different. ... I think one thing that certainly stands out is his quickness as well as his ability to make people miss. Very instinctive runner."
Porter also has worked as a return man, a role in which he had success in limited opportunities at Stillman (he had a 32.0-yard average on 19 kickoff returns for his career, with two 90-yard touchdowns as a senior).
But he's still adjusting to the much more expansive playbook at the pro level — he said it's somewhere between 10 to 20 times larger than what he had at Stillman — as well as pass protection. While he's a work in progress in that area — he whiffed badly on one particular blitz pickup in Thursday night's practice — the effort is certainly there.
Offensive coordinator Joe Philbin pointed to a more successful block Porter made on a blitzing linebacker during a practice earlier in the week, saying "the kid has no fear."
"He's tough. He's a football player," Philbin said. "I love him, I love him that he doesn't back down."
The Packers' Family Night scrimmage last Saturday drew 47,844 fans, easily the biggest crowd Porter has played in front of. Green Bay's camp practices regularly draw crowds that are bigger than Stillman's enrollment, and Saturday night's game at Lambeau will be a whole new level.
But Porter doesn't seem to be fazed by the bigger stage. He's right back where he was when he first got to Stillman: fighting for a chance.
"I made a name for myself out there," he said, "and I'm going to make a name for myself out here, too."