WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS W.Va. — **Dalen Cambre** caught 10 passes in a five-year career covering 63 games at Louisiana in the Sun Belt Conference.
That is hard to believe when you watch the second-year wide receiver/special teams ace make catch after catch after catch, many of them spectacular, during New York Giants training camp in West Virginia.
New head coach John Harbaugh has certainly noticed the 6-foot, 192-pound Cambre, who played seven games for the Giants last season after initially making the practice squad as an undrafted free agent.
“I see him make a circus catch every single day,” Harbaugh said. “And not just that, he’s doing all the other things. He’s doing special teams. He knows what he’s doing. He’s running great routes. I think he’s making a move. I think he’s done a great job and he’s got our attention.”
Cambre, a first-team All-American in 2024 as a special teamer, knew he would have to prove his mettle not only on special teams but as a receiver when he was signed by the Giants a season ago.
“Coming in, I was told you have to be able to do everything,” Cambre said. “You’re not just going to have one guy that’s strictly special teams. He’s going to have to know everything. If he’s a defensive guy, he’s going to have to know everything on defense. He’s going to have to know everything on offense. And if he is truly just a special teams guy, he’s going to either be that one person on the roster or he’s going to have to do everything on special teams. It’s pretty rare you have just a special teams guy.”
Cambre played 89 special teams snaps last season. He played 16 offensive snaps without a reception or a target.
The 25-year-old said that with a new coaching staff this season, he feels like this is his rookie year all over again.
“You go in as a rookie, and you’re like, I have to show these coaches who I am because, honestly, they didn’t know anything about me,” Cambre said on Thursday. “So I had to show them what I could do, who I am.
“And then I got a new coaching staff, so it basically just started over. I told my family back home, I said, it’s rookie year two for me because \[of the\] new coaching staff. I’ve got to show them who I am, what I can do, and what I’m made of.”
Judging from Harbaugh’s comments, it is clear that Cambre has done that. Throughout the Giants’ stay in West Virginia, it seems like Cambre, Odell Beckham Jr., and Braxton Berrios have separated themselves in the competition for spots at the bottom of the wide receiver depth chart.
“Honestly, this receiver room, we’re really, really close. We are all getting along really, really well. We all have each other’s backs,” Cambre said. “Honestly, we’re like a little family in there. It’s pretty phenomenal.”
Except, of course, that most of them are competing for non-guaranteed roster spots.
Cambre understands that despite having Harbaugh’s attention, he doesn’t yet have a spot on Harbaugh’s season-opening 53-man roster.
“It means a lot, knowing that you have, like you said, I have their attention,” Cambre said. “But that’s not the end of the day. You have to keep putting days together, stacking them day after day after day.
“Because if I were to stop now, I mean, who knows? I’ve got to keep going, keep going each and every day and keep showing them what I can do, whether it be on special teams or in the receiver role.”
Cambre has had to make himself into a real receiver.
“It’s just been a grind each and every day. You really can’t see yourself as anything else. You have to envision yourself making those plays whenever you’re not practicing,” Cambre said. “You have to think about it. I go crazy sitting on the couch, and I’m thinking about, man, what if I do this, what if I do this? And then whenever I go to a workout, whether it be the offseason or on my own or something or before practice, and you have that opportunity, you already thought about it.
“So you’re going out there like, man, I already lived this in my mind. I can go do this in real life.”
The circus or acrobatic catch is not really something that can be directly practiced. So, how does Cambre try to prepare for moments when that is required?
“It’s training harder than what it actually is because I do a lot of catching drills with tennis balls, one eye closed or behind a bag where you focus with one hand,” Cambre said. “You just put yourself in strenuous positions to be able to make the practices and the games easy because whenever a ball’s coming from way down the field, I mean, you have tons of time to move your body in ways to get to a better position to catch the ball.
“Whenever you’re practicing at a strenuous level, those catches may seem easy, but, I mean, you’ve done it. You’ve repped the hard thing, so it looks and feels easy whenever it comes to you.”
Cambre’s best catch of camp came during Monday’s torrential downpour, a staggering catch of a deep 50-50 ball from Jameis Winston against cornerback Korie Black. It never looked like a completion. Until Cambre caught it.
Cambre broke the play down for me:
“Honestly, I had a double move and ran a terrible route. Got a lot of correction on the route I ran itself. But when I turned around and looked for the ball, the ball was in the air.
“And I noticed it was a little bit short. And I was thinking, man, the number one rule of a receiver is if you can’t catch the ball, no one can. So I was honestly thinking, okay, I’m just going to bat the ball down, live to go to second down.
“And, honestly, I went to bat his hands down, hit the ball somehow, hit his hands down, and the ball just popped up. And it almost floated, like, right in my eye level. And whenever I saw that, I was like, oh, grab it. So I just grabbed it and then landed on top of him. And that’s just how it went.”
If Cambre keeps making plays like that, the Giants are going to have a difficult time keeping him off the roster.
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