ALLEN PARK -- When the Detroit Lions wrapped up practice Monday, most players remained on the field. Tuesday is an off day, after all, and many wanted to squeeze in a few extra reps before the first break of camp.

The rookies and deep reserves went through some formal drills, as they've done after most practices. Kenny Golladay and Marvin Jones worked on their timing around the end zone with Matthew Stafford. And then there was a small group of defensive backs who weren't doing much at all. Just talking.

And talking.

And talking some more.

Veteran safety Glover Quin was leading the session. Cornerbacks Darius Slay and DeShawn Shead were there too. But it was young Teez Tabor who was at the center of it all.

Quin, still with his shoulder pads on, lined up Tabor as if he were about to press a receiver. Then he would punch Tabor in the chest with his left hand, then his right and back to the left. He'd adjust his feet, lean a little one way and then the other.

This carried on a for a while. Five minutes turned into 10. Players were trickling off the field, headed for the showers and meetings. The defensive backs eventually dispersed too, with Quin headed for a radio interview while Slay and Shead hit the locker room.

A few minutes later, Tabor followed.

Among the 82 players suited up for practice that day, he was the last off the field.

This shouldn't surprise anyone. By all accounts, Tabor is a student of the game. Of course, most players who reach this level are. But this is more than some training camp cliche with Tabor. He studies everything, and he studies everyone. Part of it has to do with his desire to become a coach someday.

"I just learn from a lot of people," Tabor said. "I'm watching how (Matt Patricia) runs his meetings, how he interacts with his players, how he cares about his players. He definitely cares about his players. Everything he's done around just everything, I'm just watching and learning so one day (I can do that)."

This goes back a long time. He was watching Jim Caldwell too. Before that, it was Jim McElwain and Will Muschamp at Florida. He absorbs everything around him, which helps you understand why so many people at 222 Republic Drive like him so very much.

Last year, he blew away coaches with his intellect in meeting rooms. Ask anything about any formation, and he could spit it back at you on the spot. Rare stuff for a rookie. And a year later, he's already impressing Matt Patricia.

"He works extremely hard, loves the game, studies the game," Patricia said. "When you make that transition from playing to coaching, the view of the game broadens, the concepts of what you're doing expands, so one of the things that we teach in a conceptual manner, I think that will benefit him a lot and I think he's really trying to understand how all the pieces fit together, 'What does my job effect the next guy across from me or how does it affect the other side of the ball.' And really the full conceptual understanding of the game, which he really loves. He dives into that stuff, and he wants to learn.

"I will go off on my tangents in the meeting room about West Coast offense and where it originated, but he loves that stuff. And if you have that sort of passion about the history of the game and where it came from, it can help you be a better coach. He just loves that stuff."

Tabor's smart, which sharpens his instincts. That's one reason he was able to play at such a high level in the SEC, despite lacking the kind of pure speed so many talent evaluators crave in cornerbacks. He ran a lousy 40-yard dash at the combine, then an even lousier 40 at his pro day. Suddenly a first-round prospect was being regarded as a late Day 2 or even Day 3 kind of guy.

Of course, Lions GM Bob Quinn didn't let that happen. He liked Tabor a lot, and was surprised by the 40 times. So Quinn fired up the tape, and watched maybe 14 games of it. He figures he watched more Tabor tape than on any other player of his career.

The tape confirmed Quinn's initial evaluation, and he took Tabor in the second round. In defending the pick, he said there's a lot more that goes into playing cornerback than just straight-line speed. Instincts are a big piece of that, and so is size. And Tabor, listed at 6-foot and 201 pounds, is a long athlete with a thick frame.

"Everybody kind of grinds away at the (40-yard dash) numbers and they look at all of that, but there's a difference between a guy that has a length of 6-foot and a guy that has a length of 5-9," Patricia said. "There's a couple inches there, and that relates into his reach and ability to kind of bracket or cover guys with a broader catch radius because of that length."

Exactly. Just consider what he was doing to Kenny Golladay when Detroit strapped on the pads Sunday. Golladay, at 6-foot-4, beats almost everybody almost all the time in the red zone. He's seriously difficult to defend down there. But Tabor handled him well on consecutive reps, and did it by just bodying him up to disrupt the route.

"Receivers really don't like it when you get up in their face like that," Tabor said. "You just got to want to be in their face. There's all different kinds of presses, and you got to switch it up. But the main thing is if you can get your hands on a guy, that really helps you.

"You get a good jam, and the route's basically over."

Tabor still has a long way to go before he's a finished product. Heck, he's not even repping with the starters right now. Shead has worked opposite Slay with the first team throughout the first four days of camp.

But Tabor is lightyears ahead of where he was at this time last year, when Jared Abbrederis was eating his lunch almost every day of camp. He wound up playing in just 10 games as a rookie, and made 14 tackles. But he was forcing his way into the rotation by season's end, then repped with the first team throughout the spring.

He's back with the second team to open training camp, but had at least four pass breakups on the first day. He hasn't been perfect, but he's been a tough assignment for any wideout and it wouldn't be a surprise to see Detroit give him a legitimate shot to win the CB2 job before camp is through.

"He's a bigger corner, and everyone knows that," Golladay said. "He's just using that to his advantage."