{"id":92237,"date":"2025-05-31T03:13:10","date_gmt":"2025-05-31T03:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/92237\/"},"modified":"2025-05-31T03:13:10","modified_gmt":"2025-05-31T03:13:10","slug":"cowboys-daron-bland-working-at-slot-cb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/92237\/","title":{"rendered":"Cowboys’ DaRon Bland Working At Slot CB"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Cowboys are dealing with a number of injuries at the cornerback position and, as a result, they have one of their best cornerbacks working outside of his usual position. Last week, Calvin Watkins of the Dallas Morning News reported that All-Pro cornerback DaRon Bland<\/a> had been working out as a slot cornerback at OTAs.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The team\u2019s other usual starting corner, Trevon Diggs<\/a>, is currently dealing with an injury and doesn\u2019t have a clear timeline for his return, but it\u2019s assumed at the moment that he will not be back for the start of training camp and may not be ready when the regular season rolls around. Additionally, third-round rookie Shavon Revel<\/a>\u00a0fell as far as he did, despite potential first-round talent, because of a torn ACL<\/a> that forced him to miss most of his final season at East Carolina. While Revel could make his way back by camp, he\u2019s not been available so far.<\/p>\n

These absences are not helpful at a time when the team is looking to fill a nickelback role that it had perfectly squared away in 2024. Last year, Jourdan Lewis<\/a> played 606 snaps in the slot, and the next closest player didn\u2019t even reach 100 snaps. Lewis, though, departed for Jacksonville<\/a> in free agency, so now Dallas will need to find someone to replace him.<\/p>\n

After Lewis, the next six players with the most slot snaps in 2024 were safeties and linebackers. Diggs was the next closes corner, and he only saw 28 snaps at nickel; Bland was the next cornerback with 16. Two of those safeties were starters Donovan Wilson<\/a> and Malik Hooker<\/a>, so they\u2019re not really options to take the role, but the third safety was backup Israel Mukuamu<\/a>, who could be also an option to step up there in 2025.<\/p>\n

Bland prefers to play at outside cornerback, and there\u2019s two good reasons why. The first, and most obvious, is that he\u2019s played extremely well there. In his first two seasons, Bland reeled in 14 interceptions, returning five for touchdowns in 2023 alone. Last year didn\u2019t see the same returns as he returned from a foot surgery that caused him to miss 10 games, but he still saw five passes defensed and graded out favorably, per Pro Football Focus (subscription required<\/a>), in comparison to his teammates.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The second reason is that he\u2019s heading into the final year of his rookie deal. Especially after the injury-limited season he delivered last year, Bland is going to want to make the most of his 2025 campaign, and he\u2019ll want to do so at the more lucrative position as a boundary cornerback, a position at which he\u2019s show extreme aptitude. Per Clarence Hill Jr. of All City DLLS, new head coach Brian Schottenheimer understands where Bland\u2019s coming from but told the media that \u201cit is still early\u201d and that \u201cthey don\u2019t have all their guys out there\u201d at the moment, so versatility is necessary.<\/p>\n

Watkins claims that the \u2018Boys have two problems to solve this summer: \u201canother starter opposite Bland and slot corner.\u201d One option that the team has seemingly ruled out is Dolphins trading chip Jalen Ramsey<\/a>. Per Hill, a source with the team claimed that \u201cthere is nothing to the\u201d rumors<\/a> that Ramsey could be traded to Dallas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Cowboys are dealing with a number of injuries at the cornerback position and, as a result, they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92238,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2066],"tags":[230,229,257,2461,3430,7,9177,1815,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-92237","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas-cowboys","8":"tag-cowboys","9":"tag-dallas","10":"tag-dallas-cowboys","11":"tag-dallascowboys","12":"tag-daron-bland","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-israel-mukuamu","15":"tag-jalen-ramsey","16":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114600267401275035","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}