I have no idea. Especially since he didn't make any mistakes. He may not have broken anything big but he didnt drop the ball once or make a stupid play instead of fair catching. All around, i don't really get it. Especially since it most likely means Bess is back to PR duties. Uhg.
Im sure they saw him in practices enough as well? But man, he definitely did not look explosive at all.
He certainly didn't set the world on fire with his returns but, god....he was barely in town for a cup of coffee.
he was a pure return guy who didnt produce, he really looked slow out there and as hard as this coaching staff is preaching "roster flexibility", he had to go
Sparano has put great importance on making the first guy miss. In the return game if you break the first tackle i would expect thats another 5-10 yrds with the opportunity to break one. While he didnt get alot of chances the few times he had the ball he never made the guy miss. Now I do expect that Nolan Caroll will get the ball more, he was fast in preseason. I hope he can get the game to slow down and follow his blocks. More guys to the game, Nolan C. can spell the vets and play special teams
Not sure about his suitcase, but he didn't stand much of a chance returning the football with actual spacing.
I miss Ted Ginn. Besides having someone to blame for every loss I always felt like there was a chance every time he touched the football, especially in the return game. His statistics don't do him much justice over his career as a returner. What did he have, 2 or 3 kickoffs for touchdowns called back for holding.... BEHIND him (aka no shot at catching him)?
Clifton was just to show us nagging Phins fans how good Bess and Cobbs really are. Point taken. Uncle.
The point was to get a good return man, but apparently he didn’t impress Sparano or Ireland enough to devote a roster spot solely to a devoted KR/PR. So now Nolan Carroll will be active on gamedays and get NFL experience while returning kicks.
That's the point. Carroll looked better in the preseason. Showed more speed that's for sure. So why deactivate Carroll who can actually play a position for a specialized KR who was very slow and fielded what...2 of 9 punts?
just turning over a rock and lighting fires at the same time.could be a number of reasons..maybe he was having a hissy over all the excellent blocks he was getting.yes he held on to the ball but we are looking for someone who holds onto the ball..and..takes it upfield. granted it is hard to take anything upfield from the 5 yard line.we should be looking into our protection unit as they are horrible but are getting slightly better at coverage.
Perhaps he was/is a good return guy, but with our STs return units, how can anyone return anything ??? Our STs have been issues for several years, not just this one. Even the speed of Ginn couldn't consistently make it happen. Bottom line, as with all things NFL, it's a team sport....it takes more than just one guy to make it happen, so Smith really never stood a chance...
All of the punts hitting the ground had to have been a factor. C Smith was looked at as a sort of 3pt shooter off of the bench, he has one real job and when he did nto do it properly he was no longer here, I suspect they added up the yardage the offence lost due to the punts hitting the ground and subtracted it from his return yardage and concluded: "Heck, we can let Bess watch punts hit the ground and still avg 4 ypa, so why not use the roster spot on someone else.."?
Again, someone beat me to the punch, lol. But yeah, I remember a few weeks back someone put up a post about Sparano being upset that he didn't return one of those punts. If you're here to return punts, and are pretty much told you're only going to take the field 5-10 times a game between punts and KRs, then if I am you, I'm catching everything that comes my way, and fighting for extra yards like I'm fighting for my career... Because I would be.
My guess is that they wanted to see if Smith was dynamic enough to be worth holding the roster spot for a guy who did nothing else. The verdict seemed to be that he didn't provide much (if anything) more than what Carroll or Cobb provided.
if having Ted Ginn gave us a 100% chance of beating the Jets everytime we played them, I'd say make him the highest payed player in the league. It s that important to me.
Clifton Smith is a running back and we already have 4 running backs plus Lou Polite. IMO For us to carry 6 running backs Smith would have really needed to be impressive on kick returns. He wasn't.