New Lion Sammie Lee Hill has potential, but must improve technique

Sammie Hill is a big man from a small town. He’s a 6-foot-4, 330-pound defensive tackle from West Blocton, Ala., a place that is less than five square miles and has about 1,400 people.

It isn’t one-stoplight small. It’s smaller.

“Let’s see,” Hill said Saturday in the Lions’ locker room, between practices at rookie orientation. “I could tell you. We got about one, two, three stop signs on the main roads. Well, actually it’s six.”

“Stop signs?” said quarterback Matthew Stafford, seated nearby.

“We got one caution light, and that’s on the main highway,” Hill said. “We don’t have no …”

“Waffle House?” Stafford said.

“We just got a Dollar General last week,” Hill said, laughing.

How do you go from West Blocton to taking on blockers in the NFL?

Well, as Lions coach Jim Schwartz said, when you’re an athletic giant, you aren’t going to be a secret. The scouts are going to find you. Eventually.

Hill’s mother runs a catering business out of the house, but that’s not why he’s so big.

“A lot of people like her pasta and macaroni and cheese,” Hill said. “I don’t do neither one of them. I don’t like cheese, and pasta just don’t look too thrilling to me.”

What thrills Hill? Chicken. But not fried chicken.

“I might get some breaded chicken, but I’ll bake it,” Hill said. “I try to stay away from all that grease. It’s not healthy, obviously.”

Hill is just naturally large and moves well for someone his size. He weighed about 280 pounds in high school, and not only did he play middle linebacker in football, he played first base in baseball — and hit .506 one season.

But West Blocton High was too small, with only about 330 students, to draw much attention, and his coaches had no connections. Though Mississippi State and Troy State showed some interest in him as a football player, they didn’t offer him a scholarship.

Stillman, a Division II school with about 1,200 students in nearby Tuscaloosa, Ala., was his only choice unless he wanted to walk on somewhere.

Hill didn’t get great coaching or face great competition. His last game was Nov. 8 against Fort Valley State. But he sealed off half the field as a mammoth defensive end, and he was invited to the East-West Shrine Game and the NFL scouting combine as a defensive tackle prospect.

The Lions didn’t get a great look at him on film. Schwartz said the film was taken in a booth, and you could see the reflection of the cameraman in the glass more than the field. But the Lions saw enough of Hill knocking back opponents to draft him in the fourth round.

Schwartz said it reminded him of once watching film of Leon Lett at Emporia State, a Division II school in Emporia, Kan. Lett, a defensive tackle from Mobile, Ala., played 11 years in the NFL and made two Pro Bowls.

Hill has a long way to go, though.

“We talked about him coming from a lower level of competition,” Schwartz said. “He does have a big gap that he needs to close, and it’s going to require a lot of personal attention.”

Defensive line coach Bob Karmelowicz pulled Hill aside for a lot of one-on-one work Saturday.

“I got to work on my overall technique,” Hill said. “I’m a raw player. I know that everything that I do, I got to do it like they tell me over and over again. I’m not the person that I like to be told over and over again, so I’m going to work on it and get it right. I promise I’m going to do that.”

Maybe this is meant to be. Hill has a few tattoos, and one on the right side of his chest is of a lion. The lion is wearing a crown.

Asked what it meant, he essentially shrugged.

“King of the jungle,” he said.

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