Let's talk cornerbacks

Maybe I should be a little quicker to post because I had a pretty good feeling last night that Eric Green wouldn't make this football team. I didn't expect him to be cut today, but it seemed to me maybe Jason Allen was a pretty big winner on Monday night. Accordingly, when I went on Phins.com this afternoon and read the news, my precise reaction was "Wow," followed by..."Okay, makes sense."
With that said here's my take...

You have to feel pretty good about big baby Sean Smith. I read a good story yesterday in one of the papers talking about how big corners are like left-handed pitchers. Everybody needs one and it's tough to find a good one so these guys get a lot of opportunities. This isn't always a good thing; you can have a bigger corner stick around for a few years and keep getting chances because coaches are thinking, "Man, if I can get this guy's technique together he's got a skill set that can make him a real asset." The problem with that thinking is, sometimes, you're going to keep wasting a roster spot on a guy that just isn't going to develop the way you need him to.

I think they scored pretty big, no pun intended, on Sean Smith. Here's a guy that's almost 6-foot-4. He's 214 pounds, and he can run. Now, he's also showing more consistency than just about any rookie on this team and he's already running with the first team. You take what you see in practice and you throw it into the first game and he's running step for step with Tory Holt, who's a real crafty veteran. He creates a coverage sack. He doesn't really have many minus plays. And then he shows his other real standout skill and makes a great play on a route and comes up with an interception. To have a big corner that's playing like a little corner, playing like a corner with maybe more experience than he has, that's a real good thing. He's going to get tested and tested and tested this season and there's going to be some bumps in the road, I'm sure. But you get into November and December and January and you have a 6'4 kid running with the Randy Moss's and Terrell Owens' of the world in the cold weather, that's potentially a really great thing for your defense.

Vontae Davis. I liked what Sparano said about him in the presser today. What stood out from his performance on Monday is the negative stuff. The penalties on special teams, but let's not even go there right now because we're looking at this strictly from a defensive standpoint. The penalty he had on 3rd down there in the red zone, that's a decision making error and the kind of mistake coaches really don't mind. They're going to keep drilling him on technique and doing the right things, but the guy's got a real good makeup. He did some things on Monday night that were also pretty good that haven't been talked about much. His coverage was ok for a guy playing his first game. His run support was very good. He's into this whole thing from a mental standpoint. You watch the kid and feel his presence. He's physical, a lot of energy, a lot of toughness out there as a cornerback. I think the coaches feel pretty good about where Vontae Davis is right now or they wouldn't have cut an experienced guy like Eric Green. I think we're going to see a week-to-week improvement from Vontae Davis and he reminds me a little bit of a young, brash Patrick Surtain. With a guy like that, you almost want him to make some mistakes because it's a humbling thing. The more he realizes, "hey wait, I'm not in college anymore, maybe I can't get away from some of this stuff," the better this kid is going to be. He's got all of the talent and as important, I think he wants to be a special player and he's just trying to figure out how to do that. He's got the right people here to help him with that.

An underrated guy in this corner mix is Nate Jones, who's in a battle with Davis now for the third spot and frankly I think he has the experience to win it. He can cover the slot, he's got some savvy and the guy can play some different packages and come on the blitz. This guy was pretty good for us last year and I saw some of those things again on Monday. I think they're gonna build Davis up from the bottom and by the 2nd or 3rd month of the season he's going to be there in the nickel a lot more. But at the beginning I think you might see a lot of Davis and I don't think that's such a bad thing.

Jason Allen. Another one of these big, physical corners who has the tools and has the willingness to be coached and the desire. He showed some flashes last year but the mental stuff was still lacking in terms of technique and really figuring the whole thing out. This is his 2nd year playing purely cornerback and sticking to this defense and this scheme. I think the Green decision, as much as anything else, is the coaches showing some confidence in Jason Allen as the 5th cornerback on this team. He plays good special teams and I think by the time this season rolls around they'll feel pretty good about running him out there at cornerback and not dropping off a ton from the guys in front of him.

Eric Green would've made this team last year. This year, it's a whole 'nother ball game. This cornerback position could turn out to actually be a pretty big strength this year and I think the release of Green shows us the coaches know who their guys are, they're already here on the roster and we're going to go and play ball with them and feel pretty good about it.

Panthers game can't come soon enough.