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Matt Corral discusses drop-eight woes, leadership and receivers room..
Matt Corral discusses drop-eight woes, leadership and receivers room from Manning Passing Academy
By DAVID JOHNSON
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Ole Miss quarterback Matt Corral with Rebel legend Eli Manning at the 2021 Manning Passing Academy.
Ole Miss quarterback Matt Corral has spent the last few days at the Manning Passing Academy down in balmy southern Louisiana on the campus of Nicholls State University. He completed his stay with the Mannings this time around after suffering a bout of food poison in the summer of 2019. Corral served as a counselor for the event.
"I got food poisoning he first day," Corral recalled in an interview with media on Saturday. "After the first day, it was a Friday night, I got sick and started throwing up, and then the next day it was still happening and they sent me home and I had to drive back. I'm glad to be here. I'm glad they invited me back out. It's a good time to interact with all the other players across the country."
Corral enters the 2021 season as one of the most celebrated quarterbacks in the college game, coming off a 2020 season in which he threw for 3,337 yards and 29 touchdowns, leading the Rebels to a victory over Indiana in the Outback Bowl. His name is even being tossed around as a potential Heisman Trophy candidate in some preseason conversations. One not so flattering stat line lingering from last season, though, are the 14 interceptions he was charged with, 11 of which came in just two games against Arkansas and LSU, respectively.
"That's just understanding drop-eight (coverage). That's the gist of it. There was decision making in the drop eight. That's what was so foreign to me. I didn't know anything about it prior to those games. After that game (six interceptions versus Arkansas), you started seeing everybody doing it. It's just something that I got better at," Corral said.
Corral, along with his teammates, put an emphasis on leadership over the off-season, he said.
"This off-season was a real focus on my leadership. Not only mine, but as a team...not having just one single person telling the same people over and over telling you to do the right things. It's more of the younger cats now. They're finally starting to grow up and they're becoming leaders themselves. I think that plays a big part because a lot of these kids...you don't get a freshman that wants to come in and call the shots and tell people what to do. But it's like, if you're in the wrong, you're in the wrong, and we have an understanding of that as a unit and as a team. Just really being on the same page and having that transparency with each other. It goes much more than football. We've got real life problems and that's the transparency I'm talking about. We're building that bond of camaraderie that's unbreakable," Corral related.
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Matt Corral (Photo: Douglas DeFelice, USA TODAY Sports)
The Rebels also welcomed a more traditional off-season program of preparation after dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic a year ago.
"One, we had more breaks. When I go home, I go back to my trainer. That's probably my favorite time to go back. As we're working with the team...with got a whole spring, we got a whole off-season, essentially. That was huge. That was huge, definitely," Corral said.
Corral, of course, was asked who would be his Elijah Moore this season. Moore, who was selected in the second-round of the NFL Draft by the New York Jets, was Corral's primary target in 2020, as he operated from the slot receiver position.
"We're going to have play makers, definitely. That's next man up. That's the mentality, and that's what's going to happen, but there's not going to be another Elijah Moore. I believe that, but we're loaded. We're loaded," Corral insisted.
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