It was announced earlier today that the Eagles signed former Colts cornerback Tay Glover-Wright. The 25-year old went undrafted in 2014, but was picked up by the Falcons. After bouncing to the Packers and then over to the Colts, “TGW” now finds himself in the City of Brotherly Love, replacing Randall Goforth who recently tore his ACL. Glover-Wright worked out for the Eagles back in December, but it wasn’t the first time he experienced the Jim Schwartz Defense.
Glover-Wright actually played against the Eagles in week 3 of pre-season last year, amassing two tackles. So the question is, how did TGW look when he played his future teammates, and what can we learn?
Tackling isn’t a strong suit:
Admittedly, one game is a small sample size, but the third game of pre-season is often the last chance for players to prove their worth in a bid to make the roster. Glover-Wright may have two tackles to his name in this game, but there were some worrying signs.
Bradford threw a dart over the middle early on and it was down to Glover-Wright to come down over the top and bring the receiver down. He was nearly spun off of his man and if it wasn’t for the cavalry coming to close in every angle possible…it would have likely been a messy ending on a 3rd & 17.
It was at this moment that the Eagles began to pick on the 6’0″ cornerback, as Bradford found Josh Huff on a deep route, only for TGW to take a poor angle and completely miss the former Eagles wideout…allowing a 38-yard gain. It was the longest completion given up by the Colts that night.
A sign of things to come:
By this point, the Eagles knew that the nickel corner wasn’t exactly setting the world on fire…so decided to make matters even worse for the Utah State graduate by lining him up against Dorial Green-Beckham. The height differential between the two? 5 inches.
To begin with, it seemed as though TGW had the upper-hand. Bradford overthrew the big target in the back of the endzone, with Glover-Wright sticking to the back of Green-Beckham, getting in a position to knock away an incoming pass. The coverage was relatively strong, although if the ball was thrown a little lighter, there would have been only so much that Glover-Wright could have done.
The Bullying reached boiling point:
Time-after-time, Glover-Wright found himself on the back end of big plays. Josh Huff only caught two passes that game, both of them came against the Eagles latest cornerback signing. On a deep corner route, Huff runs up to TGW and breaks outside. The lone safety would have had no answer if Huff had pushed vertically. Glover-Wright was slow to react to Huff’s fluid transition out of the slot and after a smooth back-pedal, found himself playing catch-up to the Eagles wideout who gained enough ground to completely cover the cornerback and open a perfect throwing lane.
Then, the big one. Dorial Green-Beckham does the one thing he could do consistently well throughout his career, fade into the endzone in a redzone situation and catch the easy pass. TGW was nowhere near making a stop on this play. He was physical, so there’s brownie points for that…but once DGB had jumped up, the corner was left flailing only to be spun around and thrown down in a Ballerina type move from the former Eagles wideout.
To put it bluntly, this is hardly impressive, in fact…there aren’t many positives at all at first glance. I understand that the Eagles needed to replace Randall Goforth, but with a slew of undrafted corners still available, the likes of Kyle Fuller being potential trade targets, or the veteran presence of someone like Brandon Flowers still looming…this move screams camp body.
Even if that is the case, it’s startling to me that the team would sign Glover-Wright after practically bullying him off the field in the first half of their pre-season meeting with the Colts last year. If that wasn’t enough, they worked him out in December. Perhaps the team have found something that we can’t see from a single game sample size…but the initial outlook isn’t promising for a cornerback group that needs starting talent.
Mandatory Credit: Brian Spurlock-USA TODAY Sports
