*Daryn Colledge enters his first NFL training camp with as much pressure as any rookie could have.
He's already been penciled into the starting lineup at left guard, and now he's got six weeks to get ready to take on the NFL.
Colledge, one of the Packers' second-round draft picks, grew up in North Pole, Alaska, a town of less than 2,000 people located 14 miles southeast of Fairbanks. He went on to a decorated college football career at Boise State, where he set school records for games played and started with 52.
In April, he became the highest-ever NFL draft choice from the state of Alaska - and the eighth overall - when he was picked 47th overall by the Packers.
Colledge has to work extremely hard to make the impact that's expected of him in 2006, and he'll keep Packers fans updated in this Training Camp Diary.
In this third installment, he looks back on the Family Night scrimmage and the injury to roommate Jason Spitz, and he looks ahead to the preseason opener at San Diego.*
Daryn Colledge:Family Night was amazing. It was a great atmosphere and a great crowd to play in front of. You half-expected the Chicago Bears to roll out of the next tunnel. When it was just us, it was kind of weird. There was all that build-up and then there was no other team. But it seemed like everyone had a lot of fun.
I had a great time. I think I did well. I gave myself a C-plus leaving it, and the coaches gave me a B, so they felt I did better than I thought I did. I feel like I've got a lot of improvement I need to make. Definitely this weekend is going to be a big one for that, and the upcoming weeks before Chicago.
I seemed to get a lot of credit from the media for the block I threw on Samkon Gado's touchdown run. I don't know. The beginning of the play wasn't great, but I finished strong and I finished the block, and that's what needed to be done. Sam made a great cut and he ran through a couple blocks and scored, so I've got to put that one on Sam's shoulders.
I just keep working on technique every day. Just get better on my technique and know what I'm doing, and just becoming a fundamentalist in the way I've got to be perfect all the time.
When Jason went down this week with that ankle injury, I cried a little. We talked it out and hugged it out. OK, not really. But he's doing a lot better. He feels fine. I think it got a little blown out of proportion. He just got twisted up a little bit. He's good to go, he's a tough guy and he's going to be fine.
Seriously though, anytime you see a teammate go down, it makes your heart skip a beat, especially when it's somebody you want to be successful and a friend of yours.
We got some extra down time on Wednesday and we took some alone time to recharge the batteries. Usually in our down time we just sleep as much as we can, get back to the dorms and try to rest and catch up on sleep we don't get at night.
We are learning backgammon together. Players play a lot in the locker room when we're hanging around. We've both never played it before we came here. I've come to find out I'm probably the worst backgammon player on the team, so I've got a long way to go.
I can't wait to get to San Diego. It's going to be an awesome atmosphere. San Diego is a great team and a great veteran squad and it's going to be a real challenge. We're going to go down there with the idea we want to win the game, and we're going to do everything we can to do that. For me, it's going to be a great learning opportunity and a great learning curve.
My focus is no mental mistakes. I want to get in there and I don't want to hinder the team with any false starts or going after the wrong guy or anything like that. I want to be fundamentally clean and assignment-specific.
