Do Not Doubt Dexter

What an impressive kid. After reading this article, I came away convinced that he will be a starter sooner or later. As long as he's healthy, I don't see how you can stop a player with such high levels of drive, character and commitment from cracking the starting lineup.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/s...ficial-coach.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0


"FLORHAM PARK, N.J. — The play that ruined Dexter McDougle’s senior season at Maryland did not ruin his life. It dislocated his right shoulder and fractured his scapula and ended his collegiate career and, for a few hours, sent his world tumbling down, as he put it. But he did not pout, and he did not sulk, and he did not withdraw from his teammates, who needed him as much he needed them.

The Jets decided to select McDougle, a cornerback, in the third round of the N.F.L. draft for several reasons — his speed, his ball skills, his versatility — but also, in part, because of the events set in motion by that play, a diving tackle last Sept. 14 at Connecticut.

They praised his instincts, how at the snap of the ball, McDougle knew to abandon his receiver and zip toward the right flat, where he upended the tight end for a minimal gain. Terry Bradway, the senior director of college scouting, said that McDougle rated the smartest among the cornerbacks who visited the team before the draft.

The Jets also admired McDougle’s reaction to the aftermath, how he spent the next three and a half months, his arm in a sling, acting as a player-coach. He attended every practice, where he would demonstrate proper technique to his replacements. He attended every film session, where he would offer tips to his fellow defensive backs. He attended every game, where he would sit in the coaches’ booth, wearing a headset and with binoculars at the ready, to chart plays and relay observations to the sideline.

“He was still playing every play in the games,” Maryland Coach Randy Edsall said in a telephone interview. “He just wasn’t out there physically doing it.”

To McDougle, doing anything else felt unnatural, and wrong. Since his freshman year at Stafford High School in Falmouth, Va., he had been policing teammates, demanding excellence and accountability, and acting otherwise would have been insincere. If they complained about doing wind sprints, he would admonish them — and then finish first every time, backing up his words. In the weight room, he would chide anyone sitting down. Those who blew a coverage, or showed up tardy, or dared not work as hard, and for as long, risked a rebuke from McDougle.

“We’re here to work,” McDougle said Friday, when the Jets opened their rookie minicamp. “I’ve never had any other mind-set.”

One day at Maryland, after some teammates failed to make it through a conditioning session, he addressed them. “You want to win the A.C.C.?” he said to them. “How do you expect to be champions if you can’t finish a workout?”

He expected so much, of his teammates and of himself, because he knew what it felt like not to play, and he hated it. A hand injury cut short McDougle’s junior season at Stafford, limiting the game film that prospective colleges could view. He played cornerback and safety, running back and receiver, even quarterback in the Wildcat formation, and then, all of a sudden, he could play none.

Many programs stopped chasing him, but others maintained their pursuit. South Carolina and Virginia Tech viewed him as a slot receiver, and every now and then, McDougle said he wished he still played on offense, only because he loves running with the ball so much.

A former teammate of his at Stafford, Christian Woelfel-Monsivais, said McDougle was as elusive on the field as he was in the gym, where on Thursdays, they played what their coach, Chad Lewis, called trash-can football. The objective for each side was to toss the ball in a can without being tagged by an opponent. It got physical, heated, nasty.

“He wasn’t the one who checked people,” Woelfel-Monsivais said. “He was the one who got away from everybody, like a little rabbit.”

Only one college, though, recruited him as a cornerback, McDougle said: Maryland. As a redshirt freshman, he missed the Terrapins’ bowl game after breaking his clavicle in a motor-scooter accident. By his senior year, he was thriving again, intercepting three passes in his first three games, returning one 49 yards for a touchdown at Connecticut. On the next series, McDougle lay writhing at the Maryland 37. Edsall said to himself, “Things like this shouldn’t happen to a guy like that.”

For the rest of the season, McDougle was perhaps the most vocal member of the team. Because, he said, he did not want his teammates to think he felt deflated, or to feel bad for him. In 15 years as a head coach, Edsall had never seen a player of his act so selflessly, and so he wanted to honor him. But how?

On the night of the football banquet last December, only Edsall and the program’s director of operations, Fran Foley, knew how that honor would be bestowed. As the awards were presented, McDougle was a little disappointed because there were a few he thought he deserved.

And then Edsall, without mentioning the name of the recipient, started speaking about a player who devoted himself to his team and his teammates. Edsall started to cry. So did McDougle. The crowd — players, coaches, family members, about 350 people in all — rose as one. The crowd stood to applaud the winner of the inaugural Dexter McDougle Ultimate Team Player Award.

 

For sure. And it may take quite a while for him to claim the starting job purely on the basis of having earned it as opposed to by default due to an injury suffered by the incumbent starter. Having said that, in addition to having good size, speed and a fundamental skill set, he appears to bring plenty more than just desire to the table which, as you so rightly pointed out, is not enough in and of itself to win a starting job in the NFL. In addition to his obviously raging desire, he also has superior intelligence, character, unwavering dedication, strong leadership ability, an unbeatable work ethic and an extraordinary level of commitment toward being the best possible team player he can be whether he is playing or unable to play due to injury (as was so impressively illustrated by the examples highlighted in the article).

Unless his progress/development is impeded by injuries, I just cannot imagine this kid not becoming a successful, starting CB some day soon, whether it be this year, next year or the year after......