After Long Road Back From Injury, Claiborne Playing Confident

Cowboys cornerback Morris Claiborne’s young career had already been thoroughly hampered by injuries last October, when he went down during a Week 4 victory over the Saints at AT&T Stadium with a ruptured patellar tendon--which stood out among the various injuries that have befallen Claiborne in his NFL career as being the worst and most difficult to recover from.

For good measure, just three months after the patellar tendon was hurt, Claiborne had arthroscopic surgery on his knee.

Simply put, Claiborne had a very long road back to where he is now. But now that he’s back, the former No. 6 overall pick’s confidence is as high as ever.

“I’m just going out and playing,” Claiborne told the team’s official website. “No matter who’s in front of me, I feel like I have a job to do and I know the team is depending on me to go do my part. My confidence level is high. It’s just high on the standpoint of just being able to go play football again. I’m excited and I’m just working my tail off to try go get the job done.”

Claiborne has started all three games thus far in 2015, and has 10 tackles and a pass defensed. He’s narrowly missed a pair of interceptions.

“I think he’s playing really good,” defensive coordinator Rod Marinelli said. “I mean, he is playing really good man-to-man technique. He’s tackling, making plays. The one that he dropped down there (against Atlanta), that was a great play. It wasn’t great enough – it’s a good play. Great plays, you’ve got to come up with the ball. But we’re pleased with where he’s at. I think a big part of it is coaching with Jerome [Henderson, the Cowboys’ secondary coach], and he works on it, but he’s got a chance to go out every single day and work on football. He’ll get better. He’ll get better.”