Sam Shields suffered a concussion after intercepting this pass. Credit: Mark Hoffman

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Green Bay - Suddenly, he was back at Booker High. The ball was in his hands. Sam Shields was a playmaker again, the blue-chip wide receiver who caught 22 touchdown passes in one season.

Of course he'd roll the dice.

After picking off an underthrown fade from St. Louis quarterback Sam Bradford in the end zone, Shields took off. The Green Bay Packers cornerback looped horizontally, was smashed by the Rams' Brandon Gibson and suffered a concussion.

Foolish. Senseless. Shields' reckless play was a blooper reel turned terrible. One poor decision cost him a game. Yet his old defensive backs coach at the University of Miami knew the method to Shields' madness. After all, he's the guy who convinced him to play defense.

"That's Sam Shields competing," Wesley McGriff said. "That's Sam Shields saying, 'You're not going to beat me.' He's very, very competitive."

Shields possesses everything coaches crave in a cornerback. Size, speed, athleticism. Still, his performance this season has been a migraine headache that comes and goes. Highs - a 60-yard interception return against Denver, a deep pass breakup in Atlanta - have been offset by lows. Let's just say Shields' tackling form is not made for how-to videos. Ask Denver's Eric Decker.

From afar, a strange imbalance. It hardly computes. The reason is that defense remains a borderline novelty to him. Not defensive back. Rather, defense in general. Before his senior year at Miami, Shields was a full-time offensive player. One do-or-die position switch is the reason Shields is here.

Now, he's one player who must help turn around Green Bay's 31st-ranked pass defense.

"It's getting there," Shields said. "It's getting better day by day. But that's something I need to keep working on. I don't have that much time to work on it. It's going to come - tackling. I've been an offensive player my whole life."

The plan was to become Michael Irvin, Andre Johnson, the next great Hurricanes wideout. And that plan quickly deteriorated. Shields was suspended, he was benched. He entered the doghouse and virtually signed a three-year lease to stay there. A classic "what if" waste of talent, Shields caught just 11 passes as a junior and toiled on special teams.

With each class he missed, Shields was easily abandoned. An afterthought.

From across the practice field, McGriff watched the demise closely. He was convinced that Shields was a cornerback - that'd save him. He was persistent. A blunt McGriff told Shields he didn't have a future at wide receiver. He was wasting his time, his future, his chance at millions.

At first, as a sophomore, Shields laughed the coach off. And over time, his mood changed. McGriff, who's now at Vanderbilt, has seen this pale, lost expression before. He knew Shields was considering transferring. So one day at the football facility, McGriff reminded Shields he had two lives to support. The rising senior had a daughter, too. McGriff was as literal as possible.

"I told him, 'You're throwing away money. Just give me your wallet if you're going to throw away money like that! You could be a big-time defensive back,' " McGriff said.

The spring before his senior year, Shields made the move. He'd play "D."

"Sam had all the qualities that suggested he could be an NFL player," McGriff said. "I just thought he was in the wrong seat. I told him, 'You're on the right bus but you're in the wrong seat. That seat is at defensive back.' That would give him an opportunity to take care of his kid.

"I saw his change of direction and I saw a kid that needed an arm around him. I saw a kid that had all the ability to be a good corner."

The concept of backpedaling was foreign to Shields. He never tackled. Fred Gilmore coached Shields at every level in Florida. Oh, Shields played some safety when in Pop Warner. But beyond that? Only a couple plays a game. On obvious passing downs - third and 15, maybe a 2-minute drill - Gilmore threw Shields in at deep center as a roamer. That's all. Just go to the ball, he'd tell him. As a senior in high school, Shields caught 67 passes for 1,201 yards and 22 scores. He was strictly an offensive player.

Laughed Gilmore, "Yeah, I guess I was the dummy."

Through his decade with Shields, Gilmore saw the same skills McGriff did. Shields' father, Samuel, could've been in the NBA, he said. Dad played behind Andrew Toney at Southwestern Louisiana.

"He was extremely fast and extremely athletic," Gilmore said of younger Sam. "When he was in youth league - at 9 and 10 - you could see the strengths. Not a lot of young people catch the ball with their hands. A lot of them use body catches. He caught the ball with his hands."

So the teaching at Miami began from scratch. He was a gunner on Miami's punt team. Shields could always race downfield in a flash. In the 40-yard dash, he was clocked in the 4.2-second range. But often, it was a bridge to nowhere. Once he got to the returner, tackling was an adventure. It wasn't that Shields was afraid, McGriff said.

He didn't know the technique, his form was a wreck. Now, on defense, he'd be asked to tackle on a play-to-play basis.

"He had to learn how to tackle," McGriff said. "Sam was not afraid to tackle but he had to learn the technique and fundamentals of how to tackle. All of the techniques you have to have to be a good defensive back, he had to learn. Tackling. Playing man coverage. Playing zone coverage. He had to develop that. Those things don't come to you overnight."

Four days a week, the two stayed after practice together. Three of those days, the emphasis was tackling. That senior season, Shields started 10 of 12 games and had 41 tackles, effectively turning himself into an NFL prospect.

Before the draft, Shields was arrested on a misdemeanor count of possession of marijuana that was eventually dropped. McGriff thought for sure the Chicago Bears would draft Shields but they didn't. No team did. The Packers took a flier on Shields as an undrafted free agent and he ended up picking off the Bears twice in the NFC Championship Game.

Now, the learning continues. Shields' tackling has regressed this season. Through the first three games, he had nearly as many missed tackles (six) as tackles (seven). Worse, he was beat multiple times in coverage early on.

"I think at the beginning of the season, I was playing off," Shields said. "That wasn't me. So I just looked back at film and watched things I needed corrected and I just said to myself, 'Go back to pressing.' I went back to that. I just have to keep doing what I've been doing. I changed it up."

Packers cornerbacks coach Joe Whitt Jr. agreed there was a change in Shields' coverage this season.

"Once we got on the same page," Whitt said, "he played lights-out."

Now, the ongoing challenge is developing those skills McGriff taught him, skills most players pick up at the junior varsity level.

The Packers have "six or seven different types of tackles," Whitt said. The lockout last summer certainly didn't help Shields' cause.

"There's a learning phase on how to tackle, how to put your face on people, how to shoot your hips," Whitt said. "Courage is not the issue with him, though. He's a tough man. He just has to learn how to do it and go do it."

He'll be back on the field for Green Bay's game in San Diego next weekend. Quarterback Philip Rivers awaits, possibly the secondary's stiffest test since New Orleans' Drew Brees.

Switching to defense saved Shields. But at heart, he's an offensive player. Always has been. Wherever he does snag another interception, that mind-set won't change. McGriff and Gilmore agree - this concussion won't lift Shields' foot too far off the pedal.

Get ready to hold your breath.