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New York Jets top-10 pick from just two years ago now on roster bubble?
The time an NFL player has to establish himself in the league seems to be getting shorter and shorter.
Take Dee Milliner. He has gone from a top-10 pick by the New York Jets to an unquestioned starter at cornerback to on the roster bubble in two calendar years.
"When you look at Dee coming in, you see a guy still kind of working off of an injury, trying to get himself to 100 percent," Jets defensive coordinator Kacy Rodgers said to ESPN New York's Rich Cimini. "But as we looked at him, we expect Dee to compete for a position on the roster like everyone else. This was a top-10 pick, and we think he has a lot of ability and we expect him to compete."
It's not good when a defensive coordinator has to pump up optimism about a player competing for a spot on the 53-man roster.
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These seemingly aren't empty words, either. The Jets signed Darrelle Revis, Antonio Cromartie and Buster Skrine to huge deals this offseason. Right now it seems that Milliner's best-case scenario is battling to be the No. 4 cornerback on the team. He was the ninth overall pick of the 2013 draft out of Alabama. But the coaching staff and front office that took him that high have been replaced.
What happened? This one is easy to track. Milliner tore his Achilles tendon last October. Cimini writes that Milliner was "very limited" at OTAs last week. While players seem to come back as good as new from ACL surgeries now, the same isn't true for Achilles injuries. They can sap a player's movement. It's hard for the Jets to know if he'll be anything close to what they thought they were getting two years ago. The fact that Milliner hasn't been great when healthy doesn't help.
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It's the rare instance where Milliner's contract might be his saving grace, however. Cimini points out he has $3.7 million guaranteed coming to him over the next two seasons. it wouldn't make a ton of sense to dump Milliner now, even if there's no obvious spot for him on the defense or if he's slow to rebound from the injury.
But it's a reminder to all NFL players that nothing is guaranteed. Nobody would have thought two years ago, or even a year ago when Milliner said he thought he was the best cornerback in the NFL, that in 2015 he would be battling for a roster spot to likely be the team's fourth cornerback, and maybe his best shot of making it would be that monetarily the Jets were already invested anyway. It's a good lesson to this year's draft class: Establish yourself early, because patience might be very thin.
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Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at shutdowncorner@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @YahooSchwab