IRVING, Texas - There's one more pair of shoes to fill in the Valley Ranch locker room.
In October the Cowboys traded for receiver Roy Williams, the replacement to Terrell Owens, and have since signed Keith Brooking and Igor Olshansky, who are expected to take over the starting jobs vacated by Zach Thomas and Chris Canty. Now the team has just one more spot on the first team up for grabs.
The Cowboys on Thursday waived five-time Pro Bowl safety Roy Williams, and though Williams was clearly a declining player these last three years, the club still needs someone, anyone, to fill his job - the job he's held on football's opening day since his rookie season in 2002.
While the team may still address its safety need in free agency and will likely draft help at the position either way, the leading option as of three weeks ago, according to former Cowboys safety Darren Woodson, himself a five-time Pro-Bowler, was to move second-year cornerback Orlando Scandrick to free safety and slide Ken Hamlin to the strong safety position. By all accounts the team decided it would part ways with Williams a while back, so the search for a replacement didn't just crop up last week. Woodson said it's been three weeks since a Cowboys official contacted him about helping to smooth Scandrick's transition, but he hasn't since heard back from the team.
Scandrick invited Woodson to dinner Monday night, when the two were expected to discuss the potential change. Woodson said the team has created a new "star" position for Scandrick, who would play free safety in the base defense and move up to cover the slot receiver one-on-one in nickel situations. Woodson had those same nickel responsibilities while playing strong safety for the Cowboys from 1992-2004.
"I think they're committed to it," Woodson said. "I think they're trying to get their best players on the field, and I'm a believer that he's probably one of your better, if not the best cover corner on the field."
Scandrick declined to comment about the possible switch, but the former Boise State star confirmed he and Woodson were dining together Monday night. The Cowboys chose Scandrick in the fifth-round (No. 143 overall) of the 2008 draft. As injuries and the six-game suspension of Pacman Jones tested the position's depth last season, Scandrick emerged as the best rookie of the class, carving a niche for himself as the slot corner.
The Cowboys have struggled to find stability at either safety position since Woodson retired, and might be best served by taking the mashed potato approach - throwing a handful of options at the wall to see what sticks during OTAs and training camp.
If the Cowboys want to add a younger player with some experience through free agency they could look at 25-year-old Gerald Sensabaugh, who started 13 games for Jacksonville last season. Adding Sensabaugh would seem like a logical move because he has been a good special teams contributor under Cowboys special teams coordinator Joe DeCamillis, who left the same position in Jacksonville to come to Dallas in January. The North Carolina product has made 24 starts in four seasons with the Jaguars.
The top veteran options still available as unrestricted free agents include Chicago's Mike Brown, Minnesota's Darren Sharper and New England's Rodney Harrison. The Cowboys have an unrestricted free agent safety of their own still on the market in Keith Davis. The special teams captain visited the Kansas City Chiefs last week.
A day into free-agency the Cowboys ended speculation they would move Anthony Henry to safety by shipping the cornerback to Detroit for backup quarterback Jon Kitna. If Scandrick does move to the new position, Henry's job would presumably be filled by cornerback Mike Jenkins, one of two first-round picks the Cowboys had a year ago.
Woodson believes switching Scandrick to free safety would be a good option for the Cowboys since it would allow them to keep the same personnel on the field in both pass and run situations without signaling their defensive intentions to an offense before the snap. Last year the Cowboys deployed a couple different looks when teams went three-wide, either pulling the starting strong safety off the field for Scandrick or playing in a dime look, with several different defensive backs lining up opposite Hamlin and as many as four cornerbacks on the field.
"All you have to do is bring Scandrick down to cover the slot and keep Hamlin in the middle of the field on every (known passing) down," Woodson said. "Now you can keep all your linebackers in, which has been the strength of this team."
Woodson said the move would require Scandrick to sacrifice quite a bit. There's the physical toll it would take on his body - at 5-10, 192 pounds Scandrick would be extremely small for a safety - and plus Scandrick has always been a cornerback, a position that gets more accolades and money than safety.
"I was about winning," Woodson said. "That's what I told him, you've got to put all the individual accolades aside, understand your role and try to win a championship. You have to be an ultimate team player. And I think that was my sacrifice to the Cowboys all those years.
"He wants to win, and he'll do anything for that. But at the same time, the kid's played corner all his life, and he has that confidence and that swagger of being an outside corner. That's where he's made his name, that's his dream, to be a top-flight corner in the league. Mentally it's going to be a tough adjustment for him knowing that he's not going to be an every-down corner."
The Cowboys currently have five safeties under contract, most notably Hamlin, who made the Pro Bowl in his first season with the club in 2007 but wasn't as productive last year. Three-year veteran Pat Watkins is coming off a season plagued by neck and shoulder injuries. Because of the injuries and inconsistency he was replaced on the dime defense last season by 2007 seventh-round pick Courtney Brown, who eventually lost that job to Henry. Tra Battle was signed off San Diego's practice squad midway through the season and the Cowboys added five-year veteran Jerome Carter to their 80-man roster on Jan. 12.
Over the last decade NFL safeties have been getting smaller, an adaptation to the game's increased focus on passing, but even at that, players like Scandrick and Battle (5-11, 173) might still have trouble with the physical demands of playing the run. Almost all the safeties in the league are over 200 pounds, and even though they're roughly the same height, accomplished players like Pittsburgh's Troy Polamalu (5-10, 207), Baltimore's Ed Reed (5-11, 200) and Indianapolis' Bob Sanders (5-8, 206) all have a decent physical advantage over Scandrick.
Woodson said he didn't think Scandrick should put on weight if he were going to play in the "star" role since it would take away some of the quickness that made him so effective in coverage last year.
"Basically they're trying to get him in situations where he can always adjust and he can always cover the Brian Westbrooks coming out of the backfield, or a really athletic tight end, he can handle all that," Woodson said. "The hard part of it is when they run the ball out of a two-back set, and they run back to the weak side. The Giants run that play and Brandon Jacobs is 260. That's the question, can he handle it physically, because he's going to have to come up in support."
Scandrick showed a willingness to hit in 2008, but he took his share of bumps as well because of his stature. Whether he could meet the physical demands needed to play safety on a regular basis remains to be seen. There's no guarantee the Cowboys have Roy L. Williams' replacement on the roster just yet. With their needs at defensive end and middle linebacker seemingly filled, the Cowboys could target a safety with their first pick (No. 51 overall) in the draft.
But until someone steps up to take over at the position, there's still a job out here just waiting to be filled.
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