Who’s going to start at corner this year?
March 27, 2024
by Steve Thomas
So here I was, innocently working on updates to my Washington salary cap chart, which is much bigger than what I publish and, over the years we’ve been running The Hog Sty, has become a bit of an embarrassingly OCD-inspired obsession. By the way, if you’re wondering, I’m now down to just Cornelius Lucas in terms of missing data, and Washington is at about $44M in free space, $30M when accounting for the rookie salary pool. This means that they realistically still have at least $20M or so in cap space that they’d probably be willing to spend. But that’s not my main point here today.
I got down to the cornerback section of my chart, and happily was able to dig up contract information on each of Washington’s most recent signees, including Michael Davis and Noah Igbinoghene. They are both on one year contracts, with Igbinohene on a minimal by 2024 standards $1,292.500 deal. However, I was a bit shocked to see that Davis had signed for $3.2M, with another vague, undefined bonus that brings his cap hit up to $3.545M.
For those paying attention, that puts Davis, Emmanuel Forbes, and Benjamin St-Juste as the three corners with cap hits over $3M, with Forbes at $3.5M and St-Juste at $3.3M. The next closest cap hit is Quan Martin, who may not even be a corner at all, at $1.7M, with everyone else on fairly minimal cap hits.
Am I the only one who totally overlooked Davis when Washington signed him? It seemed like a fairly quiet signing well after the initial rush of free agency. However, Davis is entering his 8th season and has started 74 of his 107 games, all with the Chargers. He isn’t a big ball hawk, with only 8 career interceptions, and a fairly modest 40 time by NFL secondary standards, 4.54 seconds, but what he does have is size. Davis is 6’2”, 196 pounds. This puts him just one inch shorter and a few pounds lighter than St-Juste. It means that Davis, like St-Juste, probably isn’t well suited to a slot corner role.
To me, this means that, barring the unexpected, Washington has its starters at corner already locked down. I think it’s highly unlikely that they will be willing to bench $3.3M to $3.5M in favor of a minimal contract unless one of the back of the roster types unexpectedly really blows them away. It also means that they probably won’t be looking at corner high in the draft this year.
Therefore, get ready for the starters on the outside to be St-Juste and Davis, with last year’s first round pick, Forbes, filling the slot position. Frankly, considering what we saw of Forbes last season, that’s probably the right job for him.
Was I the only one who overlooked this financial reality? Let me know what you think in the comment section.