Bruce Feldman Senior Writer/ESPN: Well, you just don't find many 6-10 players in college football. Villanueva was the tallest guy in FBS last season, and he is a unique athlete. I actually spoke with him and new Army coach Rich Ellerson for an ESPN The Magazine story. It's an interesting dynamic there. Ellerson just came from Cal Poly, where he had an outstanding team and a dangerous offense keyed by 6-6 wideout Ramses Barden. The coach admitted he was intrigued by Villanueva's potential as a target, pointing out that the 6-10, 297-pounder is very athletic, having been a former high school basketball star. But Ellerson has no expectations that his new project will blossom into a receiver like Barden. He says Barden ran better and had so much more of a head start getting reps, running routes and catching passes.The other trick in this is getting the player to buy in and really get comfortable. Remember, Villanueva, a recruit who attended high school in Belgium while his father worked for the Department of Defense, started 12 games at LT and was a guy who former Army coach Stan Brock (a longtime NFL O-lineman) thought had the tools to become an All-American. Villanueva told me Wednesday night that he wanted to stay at tackle, but says he's all about doing whatever the team needs him to and doing what the coaches want. "It's all about the team," he said.Think about this: Most players these days might raise a fuss if they're asked to move to a position they wouldn't want to play. Heck, some might even "try" it and then sabotage it by purposely dropping passes in practice to prove it's not the right move. At an academy like Army, you certainly wouldn't expect such an attitude, and Villanueva laughed a little about that but then pointed out how impressed he has been with the knowledge of the new staff and said he is really eager for his senior season.Incidentally, Villanueva says that even though Minnesota and Boston College pursued him to play both football and basketball, neither was his best sport growing up. Instead, he excelled more in swimming and soccer. He said he won youth swimming championships while growing up in New England (at one point his family lived in Rhode Island) and in Europe. And Villanueva cautions against reading too much into his grabbing two TDs in a recent Army scrimmage. "I just need to catch more balls and get used to the running."
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