Vikings cut CB Xavier Rhodes

[whitehops]

1 hour ago, moss_is_1 said:

Even though he isn't necessarily old enough to lose athleticism like most, he's had a few injuries like a hip that have surely factored into that decline. He's also pretty much guaranteed to get banged up and leave a few times a game it seems also.

he's a big corner and essentially the size of a safety, so he always relied on his insane athleticism to keep up enough with receivers to cover them. now that he's lost his twitch-iness due to age and accumulated injuries he simply can't cover close enough to let his size be a factor. his COD ability has always been below average but he made up for it with aggressiveness at the line of scrimmage, technique and length. he can't make up for his lack of COD ability anymore.

 

at this point he'd probably be best in a cover 3 scheme like sherman, even though his IQ and ball skills are nowhere near sherman's. other than that a conversion to safety is possible, but it's a position he has never played as far as i know. 

[vikingsrule]

19 minutes ago, whitehops said:

he's a big corner and essentially the size of a safety, so he always relied on his insane athleticism to keep up enough with receivers to cover them. now that he's lost his twitch-iness due to age and accumulated injuries he simply can't cover close enough to let his size be a factor. his COD ability has always been below average but he made up for it with aggressiveness at the line of scrimmage, technique and length. he can't make up for his lack of COD ability anymore.

 

at this point he'd probably be best in a cover 3 scheme like sherman, even though his IQ and ball skills are nowhere near sherman's. other than that a conversion to safety is possible, but it's a position he has never played as far as i know. 

I’d argue his technique wasn’t even all that great, Zimmer was always coaching him up on hand usage. Rhodes is a big guy who dominated at the LOS and used his length to his advantage. His speed was always pretty good, change of direction wasn’t but that’s clealry fallen off and I’d argue that he doesn’t have the technique to compensate, say like Terence Newman who was slow but could still stick to WRs into his late 30s.