I’ve been having an online discussion with some friends of mine about the Washington Redskins cornerback position, and I thought it was worth bringing up here.
The Redskins have nine corners on their roster:
25 John Eubanks
38 Cedrick Holt
32 Eddie Jackson
22 Carlos Rogers
27 Fred Smoot
24 Shawn Springs
29 Leigh Torrence
20 Justin Tryon
34 Byron Westbrook
40 Matteral Richardson
Springs and Smoot should start the opener, if Rogers isn’t fully recovered from the knee injury he suffered on October 28 (more on that in a bit).
Jackson and Holt have bounced around the league for a few years; they’re hoping to get enough good time on film in preseason games to be able to latch on as injury fill-ins either here or elsewhere. Richardson’s highest realistic aspiration as an undrafted, rookie free-agent is to make the practice squad.
That’s where Westbrook spent last year, and he’d like to make the 53-man roster this year. The team likely will keep five corners, so if Rogers starts the year on the active roster (again, more coming on that subject), that means there are two jobs for Westbrook, fourth-round pick Tryon, and Eubanks and Torrence, who finished up last year as the dime and nickel corners, respectively.
Some of my friends look at that and are scared witless. At a minimum, the line of thinking goes, the Redskins needed to expend one of their second-round draft picks on a corner. Perhaps they should have pursued a free-agent corner such as Drayton Florence more aggressively.
Suppose Rogers is on the shelf until October, and something happens to the “injury prone” Springs. That probably leaves Torrence as the starter, and Eubanks as the nickel. That’s a recipe for disaster, they say.
And it may well be. I do think, though, that such a scenario involves some worst-case speculation that isn’t likely to take place.
The first factor here is Rogers. We don’t know whether he will be ready for the start of the season or not. It’s being taken as a given by many that he won’t be, given the nature of his knee injury.
Ten years ago, even five years ago, his absence for the start of the season would have been a given. Advances in surgery and rehab, however, have been dramatic. We saw Carson Palmer go down with a devastating knee injury in the playoffs in January of 2006. It was thought for a while that his career could be over. He was back under center for the Bengals the next September.
Just because Palmer made it back doesn’t mean that Rogers will. Injuries are different, and different players have different healing powers. But it’s possible that Rogers will be ready for at least nickelback duty for the start of the season.
If he’s not ready, the team will have to make a choice. Assuming that he doesn’t participate in training camp because he can’t pass a physical, the Redskins could put Rogers on the Physically Unable to Perform (PUP) list. If that happens, he wouldn’t count against the 53-player limit, and he would be sidelined for a minimum of six weeks.
2 comments Last one added about 1 year ago — Leave a Comment
Andrew Kneeland about 1 year ago
Very nice, Rich. Good discussion.
What if the NFL had a farm system, like MLB? If a corner is struggling, just send him down and bring up another rookie. That would put a whole twist on the way the game is played, and it would help a lot of depth problems in the NFL.
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Rich Tandler about 1 year ago
Good idea Andrew, but the NFL seems to be so injury paranoid that I don't think they'd want to see their prospects getting in violent collisions and running around on what would be substandard fields on a weekly basis.
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