No question, Mike Mayock deserves a great deal of credit for seeing the kind of talent Nate Hobbs was in the draft and making sure the Raiders took him before any other team would. But perhaps even Mayock wasn’t fully aware of the talent the Raiders had on their hands in Hobbs.
Hobbs appeared on Maxx Crosby’s show “The Rush” on Tuesday. And anytime Nate Hobbs speaks, you should listen. He’s a tremendous and fascinating person. He told a story of being approached by his Mayock, who seems to have wanted Nate Hobbs not to get his hopes up early on and rather to focus on special teams.
“It was just crazy to me that the GM himself was telling me you’re not going to play this year,” said Hobbs.
As you may know by now, Hobbs showed up big-time from day one for the Raiders, thus proving Mayock wrong, at least as to how quickly Hobbs would make an impact on the team. He has been one of the best nickel corners in football ever since.
To explain how Hobbs tuned out his GM, he took us back a few years to his junior season at Illinois. He had big agents looking to sign him and scouts telling him that another good season of college ball could elevate him to first- or second-round status. He agreed and returned to school, only to have everything fall apart.
“COVID hit. Season’s crazy. We go from 12 games to seven or eight games. Half our season is cut off,” Hobbs recalled. “On top of that I was going through a whole lot of [expletive], so my mind’s everywhere. … A lot of friends and family passing, so my mind wasn’t there, and on top of that I got hurt for the first time in the middle of the season, so I ended up having a bad season. At this point … I can’t get an agent to answer the phone. None of them are answering the phone. Like none of them. It was crazy. It was literally a low point in my life. I felt like I was chosen to help my family out of poverty. Do what I got to do for us … I felt like I lost it all. I felt like I lost my shot.”
Hobbs would eventually find agent Greg Trippt – a former school classmate of his uncle’s – who told Hobbs that teams were looking at him as either a late-round prospect or an undrafted free agent. This didn’t help with his feeling that his NFL dreams had slipped away. It was the words of a friend that shook out of his funk and would shape his approach that got him where he is now.
“I was talking to one of my best friends, I was talking with Jack Harlow, and I was like, ‘I think I’m going to declare, bro,’ ” Hobbs said unenthusiastically. “I don’t know, but I’m going to leave it in God’s hands and whatever happens, happens. And he looked me in the eyes and he said, ‘When you’re focused, can’t nobody [expletive] with you.’ And when he looked me in my eyes and told me that, it was like a light bulb went off in my head and something snapped … and from that point on everybody was just in my way. It was me versus me. Everybody else in my mind was food. Something came over me. Everything I had went through had prepped me for this moment, and I couldn’t see nobody but myself.”
Hobbs aced the prep leading up to the draft, which no doubt helped put him on Mayock’s radar and had him and the Raiders scouts doing their homework on him. The team selected him in the fifth round of the draft (No. 167 overall), at least a round higher than he had been told was his best-case scenario a few months prior.
Then came Mayock to give Hobbs a message he would hear, but — because of his new mindset — would not listen to.
“When I got there the second day of the summer, I’m in the weight room and I’m working out,” said Hobbs. “Mike Mayock comes in and he’s like, ‘How are you doing?’ And I say, ‘I’m good, Coach, I just wanted to thank you for taking a chance on me, and whatever you want me to do, I’m going to do it to the best of my ability.’ And he was like, ‘Oh, yeah, while we’re on that subject, we think you’re going to be a good defensive player for us in the future and you’re going to come along, but we don’t think you’re ready for that now. We want you to be the best special teams player in the conference.’
So, I’m like, OK, I’m smiling and saying, ‘Yes, sir, I got you,’ but like I just told you about what was in my mind, I don’t a give a [expletive] about what nobody’s talking about. When I get on this field, I’m going to show you. I’m going to make it undeniable. I don’t care. Can’t nobody but Jesus tell me [expletive]. Real talk. And when I got on the field I did the best of my ability to stay on it.”
It’s possible Mayock said that with the intention of seeing how Hobbs would respond. Maxx Crosby said Mayock said the same to him, and he thinks that was Mayock’s way of lighting a fire under him.
Hobbs immediately jumped on the radar of his coaches in camp, exploded onto the scene in the preseason, and was a starter from day one. He has been easily the Raiders’ top corner each of the past three seasons and one of the team’s top defenders. That includes career highs last season in pass breakups (seven) and tackles (86).
Safe to say, he made it undeniable. Just as he said he would.