The 5 O’Clock Club: DRC disappointment

The 5 o’clock club is published Wednesday to Saturday during the season, and aims to provide a forum for reader-driven discussion at a time of day when there isn’t much NFL news being published. Feel free to introduce topics that interest you in the comments below.

Here’s what James Dorsett had to say about Dominique Rodgers-Cromarie in this week’s Stats and Snaps article:

Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie - DRC started at right corner in place of the injured Dunbar and arguably played just about as poorly as fellow aging cornerback Josh Norman did. He gave up a catch on all six of the passes thrown his way and allowed 66 yards and a team-high 4 first downs. Three of the four tackles he made came after he had already surrendered a reception on the play. His 42.8 PFF rating for the performance represented his worst grade since 2017.

Photo by Will Newton/Getty Images

This will probably end up being the final game of Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie’s career, as the veteran corner suffered a torn ankle ligament on Sunday and was placed on IR today. He’s already retired once before and at 33-years-old he was already the sixth-oldest defensive back to play in a game this season.

I was really unhappy to hear about this — not so much because I felt bad for DRC or because I worried about the impact on the Redskins’ thin CB group, but because I never wanted the Redskins to sign him in the first place, and getting 63 low quality snaps out of him for a pair of losses in a two-game Redskins career doesn’t seem to be worth what it cost the Redskins to get him.

Photo by Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post via Getty Images

I kind of understood the idea of signing a veteran CB to come into training camp and help the young DB group “learn how to be pros”, but I had hoped from the beginning that this would be the limit of DRC’s contribution to the 2019 Redskins, unless he was cut at the end of August and later resigned as a November-December replacement player.

Photo by Mark Goldman/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

I was disappointed when he made the final roster, even though the move was almost certain due to the statuses of players like Fabian Moreau, Adonis Alexander and Danny Johnson.

Source: OverTheCap

Because of the arcane rules of the CBA, DRC’s salary and cap hit are quite different.

As a player with 11 accrued seasons on a vet minimum contract, DRC’s cap hit is a mere $480,882. That’s cool.

But, when we calculate compensatory picks, it isn’t the salary cap hit that counts, but the contract amount — in this case, $1,075,000, which is just enough to make DRC a qualifying UFA for the formula.

Source: OverTheCap

If DRC had not been signed to a contract by the Redskins, he would not — according to OTC — have offset the loss of HaHa Clinton-Dix to da Bears (whom the Redskins will play on Monday night).

Even if the Redskins had eventually cut DRC by Week 10, that would have had the effect of removing the cornerback from the comp pick formula, restoring the likely 7th rounder the Redskins could have been awarded for HHCD.

Now that he has gone to IR, it isn’t simple, and I’m guessing that the Redskins won’t be able to recover the lost comp pick.

Photo by Kyle Ross/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

Nick Korte is OverTheCap’s resident expert on compensatory picks, which is one of the most complex and arcane parts of the NFL.

Having no idea whether the comp pick calculation would be affected if DRC were injured, then released with an injury settlement, I posed the question to Nick via Twitter on the 14th (prior to the Dallas game, when DRC was still healthy). You can see the Twitter exchange for yourselves:

So, the possibility of getting “our” 7th round compensatory pick “back” is problematic.

Rodgers-Cromarie played a rather ineffectual 63 snaps for the Redskins across two games that they lost. To secure those 63 snaps, the Redskins used a little over $1m of Dan Snyder’s money, which I don’t care about.

The opportunity cost, however, was a $480K roster spot that could have been used on a young contributor with potential upside, and a probable 7th round 2020 compensatory draft pick — and that price seems too high for what the team got in return.

Injuries happen, and they can’t be fully predicted, but when you sign a 33-year-old cornerback who retired after missing 9 games due to injury a year ago, you can’t be surprised when it all goes pear-shaped.

But, hey! Ereck Flowers is looking pretty good, ain’t he?!