Being a highly-touted player as a second-round pick for the Indianapolis Colts, wide receiver Michael Pittman Jr. has to be feeling pretty good about himself entering his rookie campaign.
Any athlete will say that having confidence is half the battle to success in sports. While Pittman Jr. certainly agrees to that notion, he also understands the situation he’s walking into as a first-year player in the league.
“You have to be confident, but you can’t be – I say you have to be confidently quiet. You have to be confident enough to make the plays, but when a vet says something you have to be confident enough to take that constructive criticism and you have to know your place,” Pittman Jr. told reporters Wednesday. “That’s something that my dad taught me. It’s something that makes sense to me. I don’t really take it as, ‘He’s trying to embarrass me.’ I just take it like, ‘He’s treating me like he treats every other rookie.’ Don’t get in your feelings and be quietly confident.”
One of the biggest reasons the Colts loved Pittman Jr. so much throughout the pre-draft process was because of that mindset. They valued the rookie as a quiet worker but one who can be trusted to buy in quickly into the culture of the locker room.
Coming from NFL bloodlines certainly helps to understand what life is like in the league to an extent and how there is a pecking order when a player first arrives. But Pittman Jr. isn’t one to talk without backing it up.
The Colts have big plans for Pittman Jr., especially when it comes to the long-term. They eventually see the USC product leading the way in the wide receiver room whenever T.Y. Hilton leaves.
Pittman Jr. should be able to make an impact early on for the Colts while using his quiet confidence to move up the ranks of the target share order.
