Capers serious on instruction

Veteran coach working with Patriot secondary

FOXBOROUGH - At one point in yesterday's Patriots rookie minicamp practice, assistant coach Dom Capers interrupted his drill with cornerbacks and safeties for some one-on-one instruction.

Capers pulled second-round draft choice Terrence Wheatley to the side and told him to look at his right foot. Capers then planted his right foot into the ground. Then he did it again. And again.

"I was stepping with the wrong foot," Wheatley later explained. "He was just trying to be very specific, which is how you have to be as a player at this level. You can't round anything out, you have to be very precise in your movement and your angles."

The moment provided a snapshot of what took place from 10:15-11:15 a.m. yesterday inside the Dana-Farber Field House - there was a lot of hands-on, direct coaching - while also shining a spotlight of sorts on the newest member of the Patriots' coaching staff.

Now in his 23d NFL season, Capers officially joined the club as special assistant/secondary coach on Feb. 21. Considering his 16 years of NFL experience as either a defensive coordinator or head coach, Capers's hiring was widely considered a coup in league circles.

Still, a casual observer of practices the last two days might easily have overlooked Capers. Whereas some assistants command immediate attention with their booming voices - such as special teams mentor Brad Seely, running backs coach Ivan Fears, and defensive line coach Pepper Johnson - Capers kept the volume down.

But like his fellow coaches, the attention to detail appeared to be extremely high.

Among the areas in which he worked with defensive backs yesterday were fluid backpedaling, hand placement on jams at the line of scrimmage, exploding forward out of a backpedal, and opening up the hips out of a backpedal.

"He's more of a guy who tries to teach all the little things," Wheatley said. "If you mess up, he's not going to get mad at you, because you will get beat at this level.

"He's more trying to go out there and tell you all the little details you probably wouldn't think of, or something you just forget to do because you're trying to process so much at the time."

Capers's personal touch figures to play a significant role in the development of Wheatley and fourth-round cornerback Jonathan Wilhite, both of whom could help fill the void left by Asante Samuel and Randall Gay.

Wilhite found that out first-hand yesterday after he surrendered a completion to the inside portion of the field during a one-on-one passing drill. Capers immediately pulled Wilhite aside to instruct him on where he went wrong.

While Capers focused solely on the secondary - often standing behind the defense to get a closer look at the cornerbacks and safeties during seven-on-seven drills - defensive coordinator Dean Pees was stationed mostly with the linebackers along with position coach Matt Patricia. When the entire defense came together, Pees barked out the calls and defenders reacted off his cue.

After just three practices, Wheatley already felt he had experienced the benefits of working with Capers.

"He's been around the league a long time, so he's seen the ins and outs, knows the tricks of the trade, knows how to teach technique," said Wheatley.

"At this level, if you don't have athletic ability, you wouldn't be here, so now it's kind of fine-tuning your game, tweaking it in a way so you can go out there and make plays."

One of the big tweaks that was reinforced to Wheatley yesterday came when he planted with the wrong foot. Capers was all over it, with the type of immediate instruction that Bill Belichick probably had in mind when he hired him.

"It's good to have him," Belichick said. "Dom is a good fundamental coach, and this is kind of a fundamental weekend. I think that's certainly coming out, and he has a lot of great experience and ideas with different schemes, and things he's done, and so forth."

Mike Reiss can be reached at mreiss@globe.com