Tag: Maurice Canady

Giants sign four players in flurry of roster moves

The New York Giants have signed four players, including safety Andrew Adams, and parted ways with four others.

The New York Giants announced the addition of four players on Tuesday, including safety Andrew Adams.

In addition to Adams, the Giants have also signed wide receiver Marcus Kemp, offensive tackle Kamaal Seymour and defensive end Nick Williams.

All four players had worked out for the team on Monday.

Adams entered the league as an undrafted free agent out of UConn, signing with the Giants following the 2016 NFL draft. He spent the first two seasons of his career with Big Blue before stints with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (2018, 2019-2020, 2021), Detroit Lions (2019) and Philadelphia Eagles (2021).

The 32-year-old Williams was a seventh-round pick of the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 2013 NFL draft. The Kansas City Chiefs signed him off of the Steelers’ practice squad in 2014 and he remained with the team into 2016. After being waived by the Chiefs, he briefly joined the Miami Dolphins and later spent two seasons with the Chicago Bears.

Kemp signed with the Chiefs as an undrafted rookie out of Hawaii following the 2017 NFL draft. He’s spent most of his career with the team save for a brief stint with the Dolphins in 2020.

Seymour joined the Las Vegas Raiders in 2020 but was waived last May with a non-football injury. He has never appeared in an NFL game.

To make room for the four signees, the Giants waived defensive back Henry Black, defensive tackle Jabari Ellis and wide receiver Travis Toivonen, and terminated the contract of cornerback Maurice Canady.

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Giants sign pair of former Ravens CBs

The Giants signed a pair of former Ravens cornerbacks

The Baltimore Ravens have seen a number of their contributors from the 2021 season take their talents elsewhere during 2022 free agency. A good number of those players have been cornerbacks, as Anthony Averett (Las Vegas Raiders), Tavon Young (Chicago Bears), and Chris Westry (Carolina Panthers) all found new NFL homes.

On Wednesday, the New York Giants became the latest team to add a now-former Baltimore cornerback. It was announced by VMG Sports that Khalil Dorsey would be signing in New York, reuniting him with former Ravens and current Giants defensive coordinator Don Martidale.

However, the Giants weren’t done adding former Baltimore corners, as the team also signed Maurice Canady, who played with the Ravens from 2016-2019.

Dorsey spent two years in Baltimore, totaling two tackles during the 2020 season before missing all of 2021 with an injury. Canady totaled 34 tackles and one interceptions during his four seasons with the Ravens. They join outside linebacker Jihad Ward and defensive lineman Justin Ellis as former Baltimore players to go play for Martindale with the Giants.

Report: Giants signing CB Maurice Canady

The New York Giants are signing veteran cornerback Maurice Canady, who spent the previous two seasons with the Dallas Cowboys.

Following the release of James Bradberry, it was obvious the New York Giants needed to add depth at the cornerback position.

General manager Joe Schoen publicly recognized that and even implied the Giants would sign additional players prior to the start of training camp in July.

“We still have — defensively, I think is where we are going to have to add. Again, when we got here, where the roster was, we had to add a lot of pieces, and there’s only so many resources. So we did the best we could this weekend, and we’ll continue to do that in free agency,” Schoen told reporters after the 2022 NFL draft.

“Again, players might have gotten drafted over somebody else, so what that means is maybe next week there’s going to be some cuts and may be some veterans that are on the street because they drafted over players on their current roster. We don’t play until September. Our location in the claim order, the final cutdown will be important or as players are cut.”

On Wednesday, Schoen and the Giants did precisely what they said they were going to do.

Art Stapleton of USA TODAY reports that the Giants will sign veteran cornerback Maurice Canady.

The 27-year-old Canady was originally a sixth-round pick of the Baltimore Ravens in the 2016 NFL draft. After four seasons of playing under Wink Martindale, Canady signed with the New York Jets in 2019. He went on to join the Dallas Cowboys, where he spent the previous two seasons.

In 40 career games (four starts), Canady has recorded 86 tackles, (70 solo, three for a loss), three QB hits, six passes defensed and one interception. He recorded a 64.8 PFF grade in 2021, but appeared in just eight games due to concussion issues.

Canady was among a handful of players who worked out for the Giants on Tuesday.

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Cowboys bring Donovan Wilson, Maurice Canady off IR, expect both to play vs WFT

Wilson’s return will help buoy a Dallas DB unit beset by COVID absences; Canady has been out over 2 months but is likely to play as well. | From @ToddBrock24f7

Two Cowboys defensive backs got the call on Christmas Day to come off injured reserve.

Safety Donovan Wilson has been activated following the chest/shoulder injury he sustained in the team’s Week 11 loss to Kansas City. And cornerback Maurice Canady returns after a concussion suffered back in Week 6’s win over New England.

Both were expected to practice with the team on Saturday and will reportedly be ready for this weekend’s showdown with Washington.

Wilson had been working his way back; his activation was not a huge surprise after putting in good work at the team facility this week.

“I thought Dono had a really good day yesterday,” head coach Mike McCarthy said on Friday. “The thing about Donovan is when he’s out there, you feel him: his energy, just his play style; it’s infectious. Really want to see how he does today… Wednesday was more of a glorified jog-through, but the padded practice yesterday, he did everything we needed to see.”

Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones said earlier in the week that Wilson would likely be activated within days, and word of his imminent return trickled out to his teammates, all eager to have him in the huddle once again.

“I think we’re getting Dono back this week,” safety Malik Hooker said. “So that’s a big part of this defense. You’ve seen him play; he’s an enforcer. He brings a lot to this defense. So we’ve still got a lot more in the bag of stuff we have coming up.”

Hooker then entered COVID protocol, making Wilson’s return especially timely.

Wilson has 18 tackles, a pass breakup, and a QB hit in six games played this season. A groin injury on opening night kept him out of the lineup until mid-October.

Jourdan Lewis’s addition to the COVID list leaves the team a bit thin at cornerback, too. While rookie Kelvin Joseph could see a heavy dose of snaps, the veteran Canady will also be available, after being made immediately active by the club. Gehlken reports that the team is “confident in [his] conditioning” and that he’ll likely see playing time right away.

Cornerback Kyron Brown and safety Darian Thompson have also been elevated to the gameday roster from the practice squad to help Dallas cover the absences in the secondary.

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Cowboys place DT Brent Urban, CB Maurice Canady on injured reserve

Two roster spots have opened up for the Cowboys heading into Week 8, possibly opening the door for the debut of rookie CB Kelvin Joseph. | From @ToddBrock24f7

In a week where several Cowboys players are returning to action after a stint on injured reserve, two others are now making their way there.

Defensive tackle Brent Urban is dealing with a triceps injury, while cornerback Maurice Canady is still working through a concussion suffered in the Week 6 contest at New England. Both will be moved to Injured Reserve, according to the team, and will therefore miss at least the next three games.

Urban, a veteran in his eighth pro season, has played about 40% of the team’s defensive snaps and on roughly 15% of the special teams’ plays this season, his first in Dallas.

After an impressive turn at camp, Canady has been mostly a special teams contributor, but saw a fair amount of playing time on defense in Weeks 3 and 4, versus Philadelphia and Carolina, respectively.

The spots vacated by Urban and Canady will open the door for two additions to the 53-man roster ahead of the Cowboys’ Week 8 visit to Minnesota.

As team writer David Helman points out, cornerback Kelvin Joseph and tight end Sean McKeon are well within their 21-day evaluation period since being designated for return on October 13. Both players began the 2021 season on injured reserve; second-round draft pick Joseph has yet to make his NFL debut.

Wide receiver Michael Gallup, defensive tackle Trysten Hill, and linebacker Francis Bernard were designated for return earlier this week. The 21-day practice window has just started for that group; it is not known how close any of them are to being ready for game action.

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Cowboys CB Maurice Canady ruled out with concussion

The Cowboys’ depth corner will not return to the action on Sunday.

The Dallas Cowboys did not play their ideal version of a first half against the New England Patriots on Sunday. The club didn’t seem fully in sync and there were certainly more than a handful of penalty calls and non-calls that seemed to go against the road team.

Still, 14-10 halftime deficit isn’t insurmountable and the second half will be about mounting such a comeback. They will have to do so without cornerback Maurice Canady, who suffered a concussion on special teams coverage during the first half.

Cowboys News: Prescott’s most important relationship, changing of the guard at LB

A look at lessons learned during Dak Prescott’s painful 2020, who’s primed for a defensive bounceback, and why a boring Hard Knocks is good. | From @StarConscience and @ToddBrock24f7

Dak Prescott is on the cusp of beginning his real comeback. But Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy doesn’t want to be the person with whom his quarterback has the strongest bond; he’s built his entire system in Dallas from Day One on strengthening Prescott’s relationship with someone else. And as No. 4 looks to put a painful 2020 behind him, he’s made it through unimaginable darkness with unexpected clarity and light. It’s a powerful story well worth reading.

Elsewhere in Cowboys Nation, the team has shuffled the deck with its kickers, and the two-time rushing champ is earmarked as a top red-zone threat once again. But defense dominates the buzz today: Maurice Canady’s surprising (or not surprising camp), Jourdan Lewis’s bounceback season, Reggie Robinson’s disappearing act, and diminishing roles for Jaylon Smith and Leighton Vander Esch all make the headlines. Plus, a Friday Night Lights-style showdown to mark the end of Cowboys camp, and why it’s a good thing that Hard Knocks has been so boring thus far. Here’s the News and Notes.

Cowboys CB Maurice Canady surprising everyone but himself with camp performance

In five years, Maurice Canady has played in just 32 games. His impressive training camp may be a surprise, but he won’t be for much longer. | From @ToddBrock24f7

Poll the current crop of Cowboys media on which player has been the biggest surprise during 2021 training camp, and one man is likely to run away with the top spot. For cornerback Maurice Canady, though, that designation is a little bit of a sore spot.

“It can be- not hard-,” Canady told reporters this week, “but it can be sometimes frustrating when I hear somebody say they’re surprised. I’m like, ‘I’ve been in the league for an odd number of years. Just look at some film, I guess.'”

The problem is, though, there’s not that much film to look at for a guy who was drafted in 2016. Since going to the Ravens in the sixth round that April, Canady has played in just 32 games. Two full seasons in five years.

Canady’s first three seasons in Baltimore were marred by injury; he missed more games than he appeared in. In 2019, he was demoted to the Ravens practice squad before the opener, called back up for Week 2, got his first career interception in Week 4, and then was waived by the club in early November. The Jets picked him up, and he started twice over New York’s final eight games.

Last year was to be a rebirth of sorts for Canady after signing with Dallas on March 30th. But then the COVID-19 pandemic exploded across the country, and the then-26-year-old opted out of the entire 2020 campaign, citing family health concerns.

So it’s perhaps understandable that to many around the league, the veteran entering his sixth season is still something of an unknown commodity. Even to his head coach.

“I didn’t know his ball skills were this good…” Mike McCarthy said recently. “But my goodness, just the way he tracks the football, I’ve been so impressed with him. He’s having an excellent camp. His ball skills were much better than I was aware of.”

When it was pointed out that even his own head coach was taken aback by his abilities, it was Canady’s turn to act surprised.

“Yeah,” he deadpanned, in a tone that was equal parts “Can you believe that?” and also “I told you so.”

But the former Virginia Cavalier is making the most of his practically-new-guy status in 2021 by turning heads- and picking off balls- in Cowboys camp. Some of those ball skills, Canady believes, come from his early football career playing offense.

“I never played defense until I got to college,” the Richmond native said. “I’ve always been an offensive player, so from my perspective, my ball skills, I think I’m a receiver.”

Second-year standout Trevon Diggs subscribes to the same mindset. Not surprising, since he, too, was a wide receiver even into his college career. Perhaps it’s also not surprising, then, that Canady and Diggs are having a contest to see which corner can come up with the most interceptions in practice.

A friendly competition? Yes. But they’re still keeping score. And Canady didn’t have to think long to come up with the current tally.

“About five,” he said on Wednesday before adding with a laugh, “I think I’m up right now.”

That’s no small feat, considering he’s going every day against the Cowboys’ formidable receiving corps. “Top down,” Canady gushed, “great guys that could start on any team.”

Canady’s natural ability has always been there, even if bad luck has kept it largely hidden. Now the Dallas coaching staff is working to help him unveil it in a new way.

Much of that falls to Cowboys defensive backs coach Al Harris, the former cornerback who went to a pair of Pro Bowls over a 15-year NFL tenure.

“His background 100% helps because he knows exactly how it feels to actually be out there,” Canady explained. “Some things a former coach will ask you to do probably sound good on the board, like, to draw it up, but in actuality, on the field, it might not be the best thing. His techniques that he coaches, he drills them in your head.”

Canady recalled with a smile his favorite memory of Harris as a player, his 52-yard walkoff pick-six that ended the 2003 NFC Wild Card showdown between Harris’s Packers and the Matt Hasselbeck-led Seahawks.

The Cowboys corner says he’s looking forward to hearing the full story from his position coach one of these days.

“I actually haven’t had that conversation with him yet,” he admitted. “But I guess we’ll have that after I get a game-winner.”

Judging by his dominant performance in training camp, that moment may be coming sooner rather than later. And when it does, it won’t surprise Canady one bit.

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Cowboys News: Dak looking to dial back stats, Canady and Joseph look to step up at CB

Dak Prescott’s shoulder dominates news as he focuses on Tampa, Maurice Canady and Kelvin Joseph are making moves, Dalton Schultz’s injury. | From @ToddBrock24f7

Dak Prescott may not be leading the Cowboys offense as he continues to rest his right shoulder, but the quarterback is still in the driver’s seat as far as headlines. Prescott maintains that all the hand-wringing over news of a follow-up MRI is baseless and that he’ll be good to go for Tampa Bay on September 9th, but he does admit that he’s had to fall back into the mental-prep mode that got him through his recent ankle rehab. And he’s also decided that if he gets off to the kind of statistical start he did last year, it’s probably bad news for the team.

And what about the guys backing Prescott up? One outlet is openly questioning the wisdom of rolling into the 2021 season with only the committee of Gilbert/Rush/DiNucci behind him. Elsewhere, CeeDee Lamb is focused on development beyond making highlight-reel grabs, and cornerback/rapper Kelvin Joseph is searching for a drop-the-mic moment this preseason. Kellen Moore talks about how he’s hoping to use his stacked offense, Dalton Schultz tweaks an ankle, Maurice Canady is making a strong first impression a year after signing, and a former Cowboys comeback story looks like it’s ending before it even got started in Seattle. Here’s the News and Notes.

Cowboys News: McCarthy’s ‘Mojo Moments,’ Prescott’s wheels, Lamb’s latest grab

The Cowboys coach is taking inspiration from Austin Powers, Dak’s doing wind sprints on a repaired ankle, and the whole defense has a chip.

Cowboys training camp is changing gears. And to keep momentum moving in the right direction, head coach Mike McCarthy is sprinkling unannounced “Mojo Moments” into practice sessions. Read on to see what that means and learn where the unlikely inspiration came from. Also, as camp transitions from systemic install practices to more specific game prep, see how snap counts and limited workloads are already entering the conversation before the Hall of Fame Game even kicks off.

In other news, quarterback Dak Prescott gives an update on his ankle recovery and shows off his newly-repaired wheels. Randy Gregory finds himself in an unexpected place as he embarks on what could be a monster year. CeeDee Lamb continues to wow the crowds in Oxnard, and cornerback Maurice Canady is turning into the surprise of this year’s camp. Dan Quinn and his defense are looking to prove themselves in 2021, we zero in on possible trade candidates as Xavien Howard seeks a trade out of Miami, and this year’s crop of undrafted free agents looks to beat the odds. All that, plus owner Jerry Jones manages to compare this season’s opening game to  something literally straight out of the Bible. Here are the News and Notes to start the week.