*** DOLPHINS NEWS ***
Sep 16, 1998: -- Wooden Placed on IR --
Safety Shawn Wooden was placed on injured reserve yesterday,
following surgery for a torn Anterior Cruciate Ligament that he
received on the opening kickoff of the game against the Bills on Sunday.
Wooden was the starting strong safety for the Dolphins and had a good
opening game against the Colts, but will now have to sit out the rest
of the year.
Taking his place on the roster will be safety Rayna Stewart,
who was a 5th round draft pick of the Oilers in 1996. He played two
season with the Oilers, including 4 starts last year, when he started
2 games at free safety and 2 games at strong safety.
He is also a special teams player, recording a team high 17
tackles on special teams for the Oilers last year.
In other roster moves, the Dolphins terminated the contract of
practice squad player Andy McCullough and signed cornerback Terry
Billups to the practice squad. Billups is the younger brother of
former Cincinnati cornerback Lewis Billups and spent the beginning of
this season on the Patriots' practice squad.
My Comments:
This is a real shame, because Wooden was progressing as a
player and looked like he might play well enough this year to make a
run at the Pro Bowl. Officially, he had 9 solo tackles against the
Colts and knocked down a pass.
Fortunately for the Dolphins, they have good depth in the
defensive backfield as they demonstrated on Sunday. Calvin Jackson
may actually be a better coverage player than Shawn Wooden, having
spent most of his career at cornerback and showing some nice things in
the pre-season. In fact, he moved ahead of Wooden on the depth chart
for a couple of weeks in training camp and was only beaten out at the
very end.
Also, this puts Patrick Surtain on the field more and while he
didn't exactly shine in the pre-season, JJ still feels that Surtain
has the skills to become an outstanding cornerback in the league
someday. Certainly, Surtain showed that he is capable of some
excellent play when he made the interception on Sunday.
For the team, I don't feel that Wooden's loss is very
serious. For him, personally, it must be terrible, but hopefully he
can recover and come back next year. He'll have a lot of company in
the training room during his rehabilitation.
The signing of Rayna Stewart seems to be mostly based on his
special teams ability. Right now it looks like Bernie Parmalee
will not be out for more than a week, if that, but Wooden also played
special teams (hence, his injury) and if Stewart plays as well for the
Dolphins as he did for the Oilers, he should be an asset.
Related Info:
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Curt Fennell,
curt@phins.com, DOLFAN in New Rochelle (almost)
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