Brett Hundley was drafted by the Packers in the fifth round last year out of UCLA. Credit: Mark Hoffman

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Green Bay — When quarterback Brett Hundley walked through the door for his first day of work with the Green Bay Packers, he didn't need to refine any of the skills he developed at UCLA.

Rather he needed to forget them.

The amount of pro-style offense Hundley learned running the Bruins' spread offense was equal to the number of teams who selected him in the first four rounds of the 2015 NFL draft.

"When I got here it was a whole new thing," Hundley said. "Nothing translated. Really nothing."

It's not hard to imagine then how excited the Packers were when Hundley posted a 129.6 passer rating during his first exhibition season, completing 45 of 65 passes (69.2%) for 630 yards and seven touchdowns with one interception. He averaged a whopping 9.69 yards per attempt.

In the weeks after, Hundley did not suit up for a game again. He was inactive all 18 games, the third wheel behind Aaron Rodgers and Scott Tolzien.

But the season was far from a waste for the 6-foot-3, 226-pound Hundley, and the coming months provide an opportunity to develop even further in his quest to be an NFL starter. The players won't return to the team's facility until mid-April, but Hundley will spend time throwing and working out on his own until the off-season conditioning program begins.

An advantage Hundley will have that he didn't have last year is that he will participate in the entire off-season program, including coach Mike McCarthy's quarterback school.

When Hundley does return, it likely will be as Rodgers' backup. Tolzien is an unrestricted free agent and probably will be looking for a place where he can play. But more important, Hundley's talents can't be wasted as a No. 3. Not only could he become a backup capable of winning games, but he might eventually yield the Packers a high draft pick in a trade.

The main area Hundley must continue to improve on in order to master the offense is footwork. The Packers are sticklers for tying specific footwork to different routes and coverages, and it can be a whole new world for a rookie coming from a spread offense.

"I think the feet is probably the biggest thing, have everything time up with your feet in the passing game," quarterbacks coach Alex Van Pelt said. "Just becoming comfortable with the footwork with each route and the nuances if it's an adjusted route, if it's pressed or you can take a little longer and hold on the back foot.

"Just those little intricacies of each play with the footwork."

In November, Hundley was doing the footwork drills the quarterbacks do every day before the full practice begins, and Van Pelt approached Hundley and told him if he wanted to see how far he had come, he should look at himself doing the same drill three months earlier.

So Hundley decided to do that. He popped on some video from training camp and compared it to the day's practice tape.

"From where I was in preseason? Huge jump," Hundley said. "Huge jump. Just footwork, rhythm, those are the main two. Those are the big things that jump off the screen quick."

Said Van Pelt: "It's like night and day, a whole different guy. There's a little satisfaction that the drills you're doing are helping these guys improve."

To understand how far Hundley has come, you have to grasp where he started. It wasn't that he had to adjust some of the things he had been doing in order to play in a pro offense. He had to be taught pro-style quarterbacking for the first time.

The only NFL offense he was prepared to play in was Chip Kelly's in Philadelphia.

"Our offense we ran in college, nobody runs it in the NFL," Hundley said. "On this level, in this offense, it's all different, too. Everything is different. You know, I'm in shotgun, lots of quick stuff (at UCLA). Here it's all different.

"I knew I would learn it, I just had to be taught it. That's what I always stressed; if I don't know something I've just got to learn it. I know I can learn fast. It's just you don't know what you don't know. So I knew that's what I was going in with. I just hadn't learned what I needed to do here."

With that in mind, it's remarkable what Hundley accomplished in one training camp. He was sacked on his first drop-back in the exhibition opener against New England, but he never looked nervous in the pocket and made most of the throws that are necessary to run McCarthy's offense through the four games.

He started the third exhibition game against the Eagles and completed 22 of 31 passes for 315 yards and two touchdowns with one interception.

Hundley had been talked about as a potential first-round pick before the draft, so falling all the way to the fifth round was a huge disappointment. He started for three years and was the face of the Bruins program.

He led the team to consecutive 10-victory seasons and set school records with 75 touchdowns and 837 completions.

The Packers moved up 19 spots in the fifth round in a trade with New England and selected Hundley with the 147th pick. Hundley had visited eight teams before the draft, a number of whom needed quarterback help, but none of them thought Hundley was worth their selection before the Packers took him.

One of the things the Packers liked about Hundley was his intelligence, and they could tell he had the capacity to handle their offense. Director of player personnel Eliot Wolf called Hundley "a football nerd" after the Packers drafted him.

After training camp ended, Hundley's game days came in practice. He and Tolzien ran the scout team, which emulates that week's opposing offense to help the defense prepare. Hundley got to pretend he was Russell Wilson, Peyton Manning and Philip Rivers among others.

"That's my game," Hundley said. "When I step out on the field for scout team, that is my game time. I didn't get to play on Sunday, but during the week I play. Period. That's when I take it serious.

"When I miss a pass on scout team, I'm a little heated. I won't like it. I like to score."

Hundley, 22, has the same kind of athleticism that Rodgers has and showed in college and last summer that he can scramble. His arm strength is good, but one emphasis for him this off-season and off-seasons to come will be building up his body.

Rodgers went through the same thing while he was backing up Brett Favre. Over those three years and even beyond, Rodgers worked on his body and was able to get the most out of his exceptional athleticism.

Rodgers and Hundley are comparable athletes. Rodgers was measured at 6-2, 223 pounds at the combine, an inch and a quarter shorter and three pounds lighter than Hundley.

Rodgers ran the 40-yard dash in 4.73 seconds, clocked 7.38 seconds in the three-cone drill, registered a 34½-inch vertical jump and measured 9 feet 2 inches in the broad jump. Hundley ran the 40 in 4.63, clocked 6.93 in the three-cone, had a 36-inch vertical jump and measured 10 feet in the broad jump.

Hundley doesn't have a weak arm by any means, but Van Pelt said it could get better.

"Sure," he said. "He's a young kid. He really hasn't been in the weight room a lot. I would assume he'd improve. I know Scott's has. As you develop and mature with your body your arm is only going to get stronger."

There will be a lot of eyes on Hundley this summer, both inside and outside the organization. He will have to prove his first training camp wasn't a fluke and that he can compete with much greater expectations.

General manager Ted Thompson could get a maximum of three more years of Hundley before he became an unrestricted free agent. In order to get something of value for him, however, he probably would have to trade him after his second or third season.

There's a history of young quarterbacks being traded for valuable draft picks, including three during the Ron Wolf era.

In April 1995, Wolf traded Mark Brunell to Jacksonville for third- and fifth-round picks. In July 2000, he traded Aaron Brooks to New Orleans in a deal that netted the Packers a third-round pick and also featured a swap of two marginal players. In March 2001, he sent Matt Hasselbeck to Seattle in a deal that allowed the Packers to swap first-round picks and move from 17th to 10th and also gain a third-round pick.

Brunell and Hasselbeck were on the Packers' 53-man roster for just two years before being traded; Brooks was on for just one year.

Assuming Rodgers stays healthy and effective for the next two or three years, the Packers may be grooming Hundley for some other team. In a league where mobile throwing quarterbacks are valued greatly, Hundley could be a hot commodity as soon as this season.

For now, he's a prospect whose future rests on how much he learned during his rookie season. Hundley got a chance to watch Rodgers' every move and he's pretty sure he'll come back a better player in April.

"If I get my chance whenever that may come, next off-season and the preseason, I'll have all those reps under me mentally," Hundley said of watching Rodgers. "I think that's been my biggest emphasis when I go to practice. I'm learning, so that's how I take it."