Machota: Claiborne, whose weight plummeted to 150, says knee rehab ahead of schedule

Morris Claiborne, whose weight plummeted to 150, says knee rehab ahead of schedule

Jon Machota Email jmachota@dallasnews.com

Published: June 18, 2015 3:07 pm


ARLINGTON — Morris Claiborne said Thursday that he’s a month and a half ahead of schedule as he rehabs from rupturing the patellar tendon in his left knee last September.

The Cowboys cornerback, who participated in individual drills during Thursday’s final minicamp practice, expects to be a full-go at the start of training camp in late July.

“I feel good,” Claiborne said. “I’m ready to roll.”

The sixth overall pick of the 2012 draft said after he suffered the season-ending injury, he got all the way down to 150 pounds. He’s now up to 172 with hopes of reaching 180 by training camp.

Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said Wednesday that Claiborne was going to surprise some people during the final year of his rookie contract.

Claiborne’s thoughts on that comment?

“Y’all will see,” he said. “I feel good. I feel real good. I’m just ready to play. … I hear a lot of stuff. I hear what people say, I see what people write and I know that’s not me. I just want to show them.”

After battling through multiple injuries and inconsistency on the field during the last three seasons, Jones and Co. decided not to pick up Claiborne’s fifth-year option. The former LSU standout said he wasn’t surprised.

“I wasn’t expecting for that to happen,” Claiborne said. “Why would you put so much in a person that you don’t know where he’ll be standing? If I was on the other side, I wouldn’t have done that. It’s just one of those things. It’s a business. I approach it that way.

“I got to go put in some work. I got to go make somebody want me. I don’t want nothing to be just given to me.”

I'll believe it when I see it. It's a shame that 1) this guy had so much talent, even for a CB, and has amounted to nothing, and 2) that it was so easy to see coming when they picked him.

mschmidt64 said:

I'll believe it when I see it. It's a shame that 1) this guy had so much talent, even for a CB, and has amounted to nothing, and 2) that it was so easy to see coming when they picked him.

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I can't see how it was easy to see coming. I never saw a single draft guide that even had him as low as 6.

Clay_Allison said:

I can't see how it was easy to see coming. I never saw a single draft guide that even had him as low as 6.

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We all know the draft guides have a limited perspective. They aren't privy to most of the player's character flaws, personality quirks and the like. You can take any draft and look at the guide's top 10 and there is invariably a player that is drafted much much lower.

Dallas' mistake was not visiting with this player. He's apparently not that bright given his Wonderlic score. They had little insight on his mentality and basically made a "he's the next Deion" call off of watching his tape, which is a little limited. Sanders was Sanders because of confidence and smarts, not just athleticism.

And the other part is that, in retrospect, why did he fall in the draft to even make it to where we felt compelled for some stupid reason, to get screwed in trade to get?

He had no obvious character concerns...no drugs, crime etc. So what make this can't miss top 6 player fall? Perhaps those teams actually got to know the player. We didn't.

Claiborne and the situation he was in had all the hallmarks of being much less than he was billed as from the second we made that trade. From the vast amount we overpaid for him, to the proclamations that he was the next Deion, to the fact that we obviously passed on a superior DL talent to select him, to everything booze stated. There was zero percent chance he was ever going to live up to his selection a la Terence Newman.

For all those reasons alone he should have been avoided. Now, no one thought he would be a complete bust like this, but hey, this is what happens when you ignore the signs.

boozeman said:

We all know the draft guides have a limited perspective. They aren't privy to most of the player's character flaws, personality quirks and the like. You can take any draft and look at the guide's top 10 and there is invariably a player that is drafted much much lower.

Dallas' mistake was not visiting with this player. He's apparently not that bright given his Wonderlic score. They had little insight on his mentality and basically made a "he's the next Deion" call off of watching his tape, which is a little limited. Sanders was Sanders because of confidence and smarts, not just athleticism.

And the other part is that, in retrospect, why did he fall in the draft to even make it to where we felt compelled for some stupid reason, to get screwed in trade to get?

He had no obvious character concerns...no drugs, crime etc. So what make this can't miss top 6 player fall? Perhaps those teams actually got to know the player. We didn't.

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Yea, despite the whole cliche of "RKG's", it seems we've actually done a fairly solid job of finding guys with the right type of demeanor and mentality in the draft the last few years. Claiborne had very clean tape coming out of LSU, great ball skills, movement skills, he was very refined for a college CB, possibly too refined to where he didn't have alot of ceiling left to reach. He may have been close to maxing out his physical ability in college as opposed to a guy like Peterson who was oozing with athleticism but was relatively unrefined when compared to Claiborne.

But at the end of the day the real problem is that he is physically and mentally fragile. Physically he may not have what it takes to be a Peterson type of CB but there is absolutely no reason he shouldn't at least be an above average starting CB. He just can't stay on the field to save his life and when he is on the field he doesn't play with great confidence.

I never would've traded up for him although I could appreciate the fact that he was widely regarded as the best defensive player in the draft and that we were aggressively trying to fix something which killed us late in the 2011-12 season. This whole dropping to 150 lbs thing is scary to me on many levels though, I can't really see how that is possible unless he was in some deep state of depression and wasn't eating. To me it's a physical manifestation of his weak mental state.

i havent been 150 since i was in like 8th grade. This dude was definitely starving himself

GForce78NJ said:

i havent been 150 since i was in like 8th grade. This dude was definitely starving himself

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Ya gotta wonder about that. Is even shrimp Beasley that small? It's like he did some serious drugs to get so thin..

The Claiborne bust feels alot like the McFadden bust to me. Lots of talent and hype, yet complete fail on the field.

p1_ said:

The Claiborne bust feels alot like the McFadden bust to me. Lots of talent and hype, yet complete fail on the field.

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Until both guys burst onto the scene in 2015 and totally revive their careers...

Cowboysrock55 said:

Until both guys burst onto the scene in 2015 and totally revive their careers...

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Yeah, that's my expectation.

p1_ said:

Yeah, that's my expectation.

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Being serious though, the organization is really banking on these two dorks, even if as reserves. It is stuff like that that reminds me we were stuck in 8-8 hell just a year ago and it might be a mistake to think this franchise has turned any sort of corner.

boozeman said:

Being serious though, the organization is really banking on these two dorks, even if as reserves. It is stuff like that that reminds me we were stuck in 8-8 hell just a year ago and it might be a mistake to think this franchise has turned any sort of corner.

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I don't think we are banking on Claiborne at all. It's why we drafted a corner in the first round of the draft. I think anything he is able to give us is a huge bonus.

McFadden we may be banking on a bit. I don't think we are banking on him to be the lead back but he is the only veteran presence we brought in during the off season. Why he was our choice for a veteran to compete I have no idea. I wouldn't have minded taking a shot if we had a RB on our roster who had already proven himself. Instead we are kind of hoping a young guy steps up and our backup option is McFadden?

boozeman said:

Being serious though, the organization is really banking on these two dorks, even if as reserves. It is stuff like that that reminds me we were stuck in 8-8 hell just a year ago and it might be a mistake to think this franchise has turned any sort of corner.

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The gripe with McFadden is fair but what are we expecting out of Claiborne?

For him to fight to be our nickel or dime CB?

He is only being kept around because there is no real upside to getting rid of him so why not just see if he can give you something?

If his contract was up I'm sure we would've let him walk and this is likely his last year in Dallas one way or the other, we also aren't afraid of demoting him as demonstrated last year with moving Scandrick in front of him.

Simpleton said:

The gripe with McFadden is fair but what are we expecting out of Claiborne?

For him to fight to be our nickel or dime CB?

He is only being kept around because there is no real upside to getting rid of him so why not just see if he can give you something?

If his contract was up I'm sure we would've let him walk and this is likely his last year in Dallas one way or the other, we also aren't afraid of demoting him as demonstrated last year with moving Scandrick in front of him.

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His money is guaranteed, so yeah, we are keeping him just because.

boozeman said:

Being serious though, the organization is really banking on these two dorks, even if as reserves. It is stuff like that that reminds me we were stuck in 8-8 hell just a year ago and it might be a mistake to think this franchise has turned any sort of corner.

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They have definitely taken some gambles and made some mistakes. Still, there is a lot to like from what they've done in the offseason. Got an elite pass rusher, another potentially elite pass rusher, a freak athlete in the secondary, another fantastic O-line talent. It's definitely better than before, but the arrogance at the RB position may come back to bite them.

shane said:

They have definitely taken some gambles and made some mistakes. Still, there is a lot to like from what they've done in the offseason.

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True, but if the RB gambit blows up in their faces, we don't win 12 games again.

boozeman said:

True, but if the RB gambit blows up in their faces, we don't win 12 games again.

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But now it seems like there are more trades in the NFL. I doubt it would be that hard to find a decent-enough RB from some other team early in the season if all of our guys turn out to be trash. But if we would have drafted Ajayi and traded for Stacy, I'd feel a lot better. And all that would have taken is a couple low-level draft picks.

shane said:

But now it seems like there are more trades in the NFL. I doubt it would be that hard to find a decent-enough RB from some other team early in the season if all of our guys turn out to be trash. But if we would have drafted Ajayi and traded for Stacy, I'd feel a lot better. And all that would have taken is a couple low-level draft picks.

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I don't trust this team to be smart enough to give up on Randle and McFadden enough to trade. It would take one of them going down to injury for anything to move on that front.

boozeman said:

True, but if the RB gambit blows up in their faces, we don't win 12 games again.

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I'm more worried about staying committed to the run rather than the actual production of our running game. I'm confident that our OL can get 4.2ish YPC out of just about any RB going up against 7 man boxes, not an amazing number by any means but it's enough to maintain a balanced offense and keep drives on schedule. We just have to be willing to stick with the run for 25 or so carries per game in that case.

Then if teams want to drop 8 down into the box Romo will pick them apart the way he did the Eagles in Philly last year.

Part of me definitely yearns for an elite talent at RB before Romo is done though because that's the last piece to what could be a legendary offense.