Flowers Started With A Bang

Hitting Was Drilled Into Hokie as a Boy

BLACKSBURG, Va., Aug. 14 -- Brandon Flowers thought his coach was crazy. He stood with the other 7-year-olds playing football for the first time, arranged in two lines 15 yards apart. For a half-hour at the start of practice in Delray Beach, Fla., they sprinted smack dab into each other, a ballcarrier and a tackler. If one of the kids shied from the collision, he was sent home.

"If you're scared to hit, you're not tough enough to play where I'm from," Flowers said.

His coach repeated the drill each day, and Flowers learned a lesson he has used at each level of football to overcome his 5-foot-10 stature. "If you deliver the blow," Flowers said, "it doesn't hurt as bad as if you were taking the blow."

Flowers delivers blows these days as a Virginia Tech cornerback, one of the best players on one of the best defenses in the country. Flowers burst on to the national stage in his sophomore season, earning first-team all-ACC and third-team all-American honors.

He garnered such attention by augmenting his natural skill with confidence that increased as each week passed. After a spring in which Flowers worked to eliminate his weaknesses, he feels he is poised to prove his all-American season was not a fluke.

"I appreciate that status a lot, but it's gone now," Flowers said. "I just throw it out the window. I look at it like I'm not an all-American no more. I got a season to play."

In the offseason, Flowers made frequent visits to the video room with Victor "Macho" Harris, the cornerback who starts opposite him. They gave the attendant working in the video room $1 as a tip, then took the tape home. ("You can get more relaxed at home," Flowers said.) The pair studied their techniques and learned how passing games try to attack secondaries.

Flowers noticed that he looked into the backfield too much in the moments before the wide receiver he was assigned to made his cut. He improved the way he rotates his hips and plants his back foot when a receiver makes a break.

"There's a lot of stuff I learned that I didn't do last year," Flowers said. "I'm thinking if I had a season like I did last year, with the stuff I know now, I just can't wait to see how this year turns out."

For Flowers, last season took off against North Carolina in the Hokies' ACC opener. It was the first time Flowers had started a conference game, and he wondered how he would fare against the competition. When Flowers broke up two passes and made one tackle for a loss, he knew he belonged.

"Once you get confident, you just know what plays are coming," Flowers said.

As the season progressed, he began baiting quarterbacks by showing one look and then switching. He would hang off a receiver ever so slightly, giving the opposing quarterback security, then break on the ball. He deflected an ACC-best 18 passes and intercepted three more. Harris began hearing Flowers talking trash to ballcarriers he just leveled. "That's his swagger," Harris said.

"When I go into the game, I don't think I can get beat," Flowers said. "Once you got that confidence, it's real hard to get past you."

That can be true in a literal sense, too, because of the vicious hits Flowers delivers. He packs a taut 190 pounds onto his frame, and he explodes into ballcarriers as if spring-loaded. He tied for the team lead with 3 1/2 sacks last season, blitzing with abandon.

"He's fearless," defensive backs coach Torrian Gray said. "That's something you can't teach as far as his mind-set."

That mind-set was ingrained in him on Florida fields years ago, when he first learned the sport. He learned how to hit by running through people as if they weren't there, he said.

"I think it's all about heart," Flowers said. "I don't feel like I'm one of the smallest cornerbacks out there. I feel like I'm just as big as anybody."

Hokies Note: Senior cornerback Roland Minor expected to practice Tuesday for the first time this season, but he has not yet been cleared because of academics. Coach Frank Beamer said Minor can rejoin the Hokies on Monday, Virginia Tech's first day of classes.