Next steps for Quinyon Mitchell? Improving his ball skills and shadowing the NFL’s top receivers

For most of the 2024 season, Quinyon Mitchell was less of a ball hawk and more of a ball repellent.

Quarterbacks seldom threw the ball the then-rookie’s way — among cornerbacks who took at least 600 coverage snaps last season, Mitchell faced the fourth-fewest targets (71, per Pro Football Focus).

But when Mitchell was in position to make an interception in the regular season, something went awry, even if it was out of his control. There was the dropped pick on a Drake London third-down target against the Atlanta Falcons. There was the friendly fire with C.J. Gardner-Johnson vs. the Cleveland Browns. Gardner-Johnson then practically snagged one out of Mitchell’s arms against the Dallas Cowboys in Week 17.

The repellent seemingly wore off by the playoffs. Mitchell made a game-sealing pick in the wild-card round against the Green Bay Packers and grabbed another interception in the NFC championship against the Washington Commanders. Still, even in Year 2, Mitchell gets plenty of grief from his teammates about his ball skills.

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“I feel like pretty much the whole team be on me,” Mitchell said Thursday. “Just nitpicking at me and making sure I’m putting in the extra work.”

That extra work appears to be paying dividends early in training camp as Mitchell assumes the No. 1 cornerback job after Darius Slay’s departure. Mitchell made a one-handed interception on Monday in an 11-on-11 drill in coverage against A.J. Brown, marking Jalen Hurts’ first turnover of the summer.

The play wasn’t lost on Vic Fangio. The Eagles defensive coordinator commended Mitchell on the strides that he has taken to improve his ball skills this offseason.

“I think it can improve, obviously, with work, and I think the work he’s put in has made it,” Fangio said Tuesday. “He has improved. He had a nice interception [on Monday], which I don’t know if he [would have made it] last year, but ball skills are a natural thing, too, so the improvement you can make is incremental, but any improvement he can make, he’ll make because he’ll work at it.”

Fernando Noriega, the Eagles’ head strength and conditioning coach, has incorporated a couple of creative tactics to aid Mitchell in his quest toward improved hands. One of those exercises, according to Mitchell, involves tracking across computer screens.

Mitchell also uses a reactive catch device that bears a different color — red, yellow, and blue — on each of its three prongs. After he tosses the device in the air, Mitchell must grab the color called out by a trainer.

“Every day before we go out to practice, I do something with our strength coach, Coach ’Nando,” Mitchell said. “So that’s just been something that I’ve been really just trying to work on each and every day.“

With improved skills and more experience comes greater opportunity. Mitchell, who spent the majority of last season at the right outside cornerback spot, began to work in on the left side early in training camp. Fangio noted on the second day of camp that he’s preparing Mitchell to travel, a strategy that typically deploys a No. 1 cornerback against the opponent’s No. 1 receiver, regardless of where the latter lines up along the line of scrimmage.

Mitchell is getting top-notch preparation in-house. Six practices into camp, the second-year cornerback has been traveling across the formation at times to match up against the All-Pro Brown.

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“It’s been really fun,” Mitchell said. “Each and every day, I go out, I kind of treat it like a game. He’s been getting me better, but at the same time, I want to make him better. On game days, it’s easy for him. So I just don’t want to make it super easy for him.”

Mitchell is no stranger to facing off against the three-time Pro Bowl receiver. The duo went at it in training camp last season, and their reps regularly concluded with smatterings of trash talk.

This year is different. Mitchell said their reps are more like “silent battles,” in which both parties work hard at their respective crafts. Mitchell added that he feels more comfortable in the system this year, knowing where his safety help is coming from and how to play against Brown in different types of coverages.

That comfort is translating to a sense of self-assurance. Quarterback Jalen Hurts lauded Mitchell on Tuesday for his strong start to camp and noted that the 2024 first-round pick out of Toledo is playing with “great confidence.”

“That’s something that you can see,” Hurts said. “I’m his biggest fan because it’s something about that on the other side of the ball when you see guys taking those strides and growing and competing and knowing that they’re going against the best of the best every day. I know he’s continued to take those steps, and that’s what he’s showing daily.”

Mitchell isn’t fixated on any particular individual goal in 2025. He was a finalist for the league’s defensive rookie of the year award, which went to Los Angeles Rams defensive end Jared Verse.

Instead, he’s focused on the tasks at hand as he takes on a bigger role in Fangio’s defense, whether he’s honing in on his ball skills before practice or shadowing Brown in team drills.

“It’s no bar,” Mitchell said. “It’s really no ceiling. I just want to get better each and every day.”