It’s not the only unorthodox training method Burris, who played at Notre Dame in the early 90s, then started 119 NFL games over a ten-year career that included stops in Buffalo (where he was a first-round pick), Indianapolis and Cincinnati. During spring practice, to help train his corners not to clutch at receivers, he had them wearing oven mitts.
“I was sitting there thinking, how can I eliminate them from grabbing,” Burris said. “They hate to hear it. They know when I’m frustrated, I say ‘Bring the oven mitts out,’ and they know that someone grabbed a receiver.”
Redshirt freshman cornerback Randall Jette said his first reaction when he saw the oven mitts was confusion.
“I had no clue what he wanted us to do with them,” Jette said. He told us just to go out and play, so we had to go out and play with the oven mitts.”
The techniques are unique to Burris, who says he used them in the past on high school teams, but this is his first time experimenting with them at the collegiate level.
“It was something that over time I figured I’d give it a shot and see if it works,” he said. “Right now I’m still trying to figure it out.”
He has one believer in Jette.
“It’s just going to slow the game down once we have everything off,” Jette said.
