On Memorial Day weekend, Malik Cunningham was officially moved from quarterback to wide receiver.
The former New England Patriot was resistant initially but has since embraced the role.
“At first, I looked at it as like, ‘Dang man, I want to be a quarterback,'” he said while appearing on the team’s official podcast The Lounge.
“But at the same time, you have to do what’s best for the team and that’s how I looked at it. I was like, ‘Hey, I can make plays for the quarterbacks out there when I get the ball in space.’ So I looked at it as a plus, not as a fail.
“I believe in myself and my ability. Yeah, I can play quarterback. But that’s now what they need me to do right now. They need me to do something else.”
So far so good, as the early reviews have been favorable.
“Malik has looked good at wide receiver. He’s shown a lot of speed, a lot of quickness. [He’s] kind of a natural at the position,” coach John Harbaugh said.
“I’ve seen that he understands the game from the perspective of the quarterback, so [his] routes and coverage and timing and things like that have been excellent.”
Quarterback to wide receiver is a very natural change and much less difficult than other position switches for some of the reasons that Harbaugh mentioned.
Wide receivers coach Greg Lewis said veteran receivers Sean Ryan, Zay Flowers, and Rashod Batemon are helping Cunningham with the transition.
“They’re bringing him along and teaching him the nuances of playing receiver, but he understands spatial awareness, [and] he understands from the quarterback’s perspective, so obviously, he understands zone coverage,” Lewis said.
“Now, it’s just getting him to do the little things are receivers do, because he hasn’t done it a bunch.”
When he does figure out the little things, it’ll be interesting to see where he fits on the WR depth chart. It could be that Cunningham will actually see most of his playing time on special teams.
And in one of those football “fun facts,” the interesting twists of fate that we often see in this sport- Lamar Jackson will now be throwing passes to the same guy who ultimately succeeded him as the starting quarterback at Louisville.
