The day Mitchell White noticed a major difference between the Canadian Football League and the NFL was, of course, the first one. Coming off three seasons playing cornerback up north, the Eagles’ rookie lined up to play defense in practice, followed his receiver downfield, turned and looked. The ball was already there.
The game is faster here, a common expression that strikes suddenly for a player making the transition.
“In Canada, it’s like, ‘I got time, I’ll go run back to them and then I’ll go look,’ ” White said. “You’ve got to go speed that process up, so that whole procedure in terms of, OK, the guy is running a go route or a nine route, you’ve got trust your ability and say, ‘All right, I’m just going to go look for the ball.