Texans play cornerback shuffle

Brice McCain (cstv.com)

With starting corner Jacques Reeves out for 6-8 weeks, Antwuan Molden on PUP, and Glover Quin fighting through some training camp dings, the Texans cornerback unit is looking like a MASH unit. 

In an attempt to stop the bleeding, the Houston Chronicle reports that the Texans plan to bring in veteran free agent corners  Deltha O'Neal and Jason Webster on Thursday for a workout.  A player will have to be released from the roster if either O'Neal or Webster is signed.

Update: Mark Berman of Fox 26 reports that the Texans are also bringing in Mike McKenzie to work out.  You remember the guy with the dreads from Green Bay, right?  The Texans are also bringing in a couple of running backs for a workout to compensate for Arian Foster's tweaked hammy and Jeremiah Johnson's sore shoulder.  Not to worry (hopefully) - these things happen in camp.

Some good news today was that promising rookie Glover Quin was able to return to the practice field.  Quin sat out practices Sunday and Monday with a knot on his knee.

Another silver lining in all this mess is that rookie 6th round draft choice Brice McCain is getting a lot of reps against starters Andre Johnson, Andre Davis and David Anderson.

McCain spoke to the media about his opportunity today after practice.  Scroll to the bottom of this article provided by houstontexans.com to read McCain's quotes. 

I like what he's saying - and I like what I've seen of him at camp.  He can run with the fastest receivers,  but at only 5-9, 179, he will need to work on is the physical aspects of playing corner, that is, developing techniques to use his body as a defensive mechanism and coming up to meet the run. 

In terms of injuries every team has it's challenges so let's hope this (and nothing more) will be the Texans challenge this season.  As you read news from around the league, players are getting hurt and that's always one ot the frustrating aspects of preseason.

Of course the situation at cornerback has rekindled talk about Dunta Robinson on the radio talks shows.  People have been asking me what I think of the Robinson situation and I tell them that I've written way too much about it already.  (Go to my home page and click on the Dunta Robinson topic and select any of the dozen or more articles on the topic)

But in light of all the recent radio talk on the Dunta topic,  I wanted to bring forward an article that I wrote in early March.

Some of what's written in that article is dated but other parts are still relevant, such as the table at the bottom that shows the top paid corners in the league (at the time in terms of guaranteed money) and that Dunta and his agent were naive to believe that Texans GM Rick Smith wouldn't double back on his word and use the franchise tag if forced by unreasonable demands - such as turning down $23 million plus guaranteed which I believe to be true until I see proven otherwise.