Carlos Rogers Remains Positive, Even In Practice
Posted by Matt Terl on November 18, 2009 – 3:39 pm
The way Carlos Rogers‘ day went on Sunday, it seemed reasonable to be ask if he would be playing again at all. After getting scorched for a 75 yard touchdown pass, Rogers was pulled from the game and did not return. Depending on how the situation with the collective bargaining agreement develops, Rogers may be an unrestricted free agent next season, and there were some who were suggesting that this marked the end of Rogers’ tenure in Washington.
But that’s not the way he sees it, and it doesn’t sound like the way his position coach sees it either.
“I gotta be smart enough as a coach to say, You know what, I’m gonna protect my guy,” defensive backs coach Jerry Gray said today when asked about the move. “We’re tryin’ to win a game. We’re not trying to see how many this-and-this we can do. It’s all about team.”
Rogers also gave all the right answers, even joking with the media that he wasn’t going to provide the inflammatory quotes they were hoping for. “I’m here to support the team in whatever,” he said. “I’m out there, I’m gonna continue to prepare, practice, continue to study like I am the starter.”
He attributes his problems with the long ball at times this season largely to being over-aggressive. “You know, being an aggressive corner — and not even an aggressive corner, just a corner that don’t want passes completed on him,” he said. “If it’s third down, my mindset is, let’s get off the field, I wanna get off the field, they throw this ball to one of their go-to guys, I don’t want him to catch it. And that’s my mindset. With that, it’s just tough, cause you think a route’s coming, you’ve studied the formations and, All right, this is what they do. They do that and, [by the] time you look back to get a pick or to break up the ball or anything it’s back there. Sunday, they got about three, and we didn’t cover not ONE of ‘em. You know, it’s tough to do.”
But Gray and Rogers have talked, and Rogers feels confident that he knows what adjustments he needs to make. “I’ll just stay with my eyes on the receiver longer, and more cushion,” Rogers explained. “I’m kind of a guy like, I wanna be ON my receiver, like tight and tough. I just probably need to stay [at] more depth, stay over the top and just keep my eyes on the receiver. That’s the only thing I can do, the only thing Jerry told me to do. Don’t stop my aggression, don’t stop being a physical corner. Just keep your eyes on the receiver and loosen up the cushion.”
In today’s practice, Rogers ran with the first team defense, and the adjustments seemed to produce the results that Gray was hoping for.
“I think there’s a period of embarrassment, and then I think you get past that and you say, Well, Coach, why’d you do it? And you explain it and you go on,” Gray said. “He practiced well today, so obviously he reacted pretty good.”
Tags: Carlos Rogers, CarlosRogers, jerry gray, JerryGray
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