Hitting Some Raw Nerve

Mickey Spagnola
DallasCowboys.com

IRVING, Texas - If nothing else, these Dallas Cowboys have a lot of nerve.

Here their best cornerback, Terence Newman, still isn't practicing with Sunday's season opener against the New York Giants closing in fast, yet they choose to release their most experienced cornerback on the team, Aaron Glenn.

Here their best run-stopping outside linebacker, Greg Ellis, still isn't practicing, and has not since the first day of training camp, and neither is nickel backer Kevin Burnett, yet the Cowboys have no problems keeping just seven linebackers and then claiming a rookie off the waiver wire over the weekend for the eighth.

And here the Cowboys are, a team having played kicker roulette over the past few years because of injury and then vacated ability, spinning the wheel one more time, deciding to place the slightly injured Martin Gramatica on injured reserve and go with rookie kicker Nick Folk as their guy.

I'm telling you, nerve.

Now they just have to be right.

Yeah, sure, coaching is very important in the NFL, but maybe more important are the personnel decisions, the ones centered on who you draft, who you keep, who you cut, who you claim on waivers. Nothing to do with X's and O's.

Just like this weekend. Will the Cowboys rue the day they waived rookie quarterback Matt Moore, hoping he'd clear waivers so they could sign him to the practice squad, only to have Carolina intercept their intentions? Will they regret releasing wide receiver Jerheme Urban when they might have qualified keeping seven receivers? Will they ever wish they had a full-time backup for the 32-year-old Jason Ferguson at nose tackle, a position they continually turned their back on this entire off-season?

But these are the tough decisions teams have to make this time of year.

But the toughest the Cowboys had centered on cornerback, kicker and linebacker. The Cowboys know there is a good chance Greg Ellis won't be playing Sunday night against the Giants. I mean, he hasn't practiced since the first day of training camp, and it would be hard to imagine if he doesn't practice on Wednesday he'll be capable of playing on Sunday. He's got to be doubtful at this point.

Now that's not the problem. First-round pick Anthony Spencer jumps in for him, just as he has started all four preseason games. But the linebacker situation, thought to be a strength on this team, seems suddenly rather depleted. Ellis is quite iffy and Burnett, the team's starting nickel backer, still hasn't jumped back into practice after surgery to remove a bone chip from his ankle. Now he had half the stitches taken on Monday and the other half are scheduled to be removed on Tuesday. He could possibly practice by Wednesday.

But if he's not ready to play - questionable at best - that reduces the Cowboys linebacker corps to five healthy and prepared guys, meaning four starters and Bobby Carpenter. Oh sure, they claimed rookie Justin Rogers off waivers Sunday, but he's likely to be prepared for no more than special teams duty by Sunday.

Yikes.

Then there is kicker. The Cowboys thought this too could be a strength, since Gramatica and Folk were having such good preseasons. They were prepared to keep the veteran and the rookie.

But Gramatica strained his hamstring warming up for the final preseason game, and no way would the Cowboys keep two kickers on the 53-man roster if one couldn't kick for maybe 2-3 weeks. So they had no choice, Gramatica to injured reserve - probably released at some point through an injury settlement or once he can pass a physical - and Folk, the kid who knew not a thing about place-kicking until he was a freshman in high school, front and center for all the kicks.

Geesh, one year the Cowboys open the season biting their lip over Jose Cortez, the next Mike Vanderjagt and now a rookie starting off his NFL career kicking under no less than the glaring lights of nationally-televised, primetime Sunday Night Football.

Maybe there was no way to play this one conservatively.

But at cornerback? One week Cowboys head coach Wade Phillips is wondering if he has more than two corners - Newman and Anthony Henry - since no one stepped up in the third preseason game in Newman's absence. The next the Cowboys are operating in practice with Jacques Reeves opposite Henry at cornerback and Nate Jones coming into the slot at nickel.

That's because the Cowboys made the somewhat gutsy decision to cut Glenn, the 14th-year veteran who was one of those who struggled in that third preseason game to "step up." And while he appeared to "step up" in that final preseason game, evidently he was a flight or two short.

Or, several hundred thousands of dollars too expensive.

Remember, Glenn's base salary was $1.7 million, and even though $500,000 was guaranteed, the entire amount would have been guaranteed if he was on the team's 53-man roster this week. Evidently the Cowboys decided that was too much for a guy they had evaluated as but a nickel corner. They didn't trust him to start in case of injury (See Newman), either.

Phillips would not say why, basically pointing out the criteria for keeping players by saying you judge guys by "if they can start, next if we think they will be an eventual starter, next would be a special teams value and also whether he has a special thing he can do - play nickel, nickel rusher, third-down receiver, all those things. There is a lot of criteria."

So cryptically, Phillips is saying, since Newman is considered the starter, and he's still holding out hope of T-New being ready for the opener, and if not then likely for the second game, Glenn is not a starter. Didn't sound as if he considered him an emergency starter and obviously not a potential starter down the line. And since he's not a special teams player, basically the Cowboys would be paying $1.7 million for a nickel back, a guy who might play 35 percent of the snaps.

That, they deemed, was too high a price to pay for what they would be getting.

We'll see, and now there is no turning back since Jacksonville didn't waste any time and didn't seem hesitant to sign the 35-year-old corner on Monday as a potential nickel corner. OK, the Jags want Glenn to compete with Terry Cousins for the nickel spot, but again, since he was a vested veteran, they didn't just pick him up off waivers. They ended up signing the free agent to a new contract, and while the deal has not been disclosed yet, chances are its somewhere between the $1.7 million base he was getting here and the $820,000 10-plus-year veteran minimum . . . maybe no more than just that.

So here is the deal at cornerback. Henry starts on the right side. Newman, they pray starts on the left. But if he doesn't, then the remaining cornerbacks on the roster not named Henry - Reeves, Jones and recently claimed Evan Oglesby - have a combined total of two starts in their combined eight years in the league.

Gosh, on this team this decade, if it's not quarterback it's cornerback. If it's not defensive end, it's kicker - and sometimes it's been - and is -- both.

Now they just must hope this weekend's bold steps don't strike a raw nerve.