Colts' Bob Sanders Should Pull a Roger Clemens

With Roger Clemens returning to the Yankees, there's been a lot of talk about the special arrangement the Yankees have made, allowing Clemens to join the team a couple months into the season and skip road trips when he won't be pitching. David Wells and Phil Garner are among those who have criticized the arrangement.

I think it's great for Clemens and great for the Yankees: If it helps Clemens stay fresh and therefore makes the Yankees a better team in September and October, who cares what he does in March, April and May? In fact, I'd love to see it happen in the NFL: If a football player is great when he gets on the field but susceptible to injury, NFL teams would be wise to let him take time off during the season to be ready to go in January.

There are differences, though: pitchers routinely get four days off while football players are expected to play every game, there are fewer games in football, and players are more reliant on their teammates. An NFL team really couldn't allow its quarterback to take games off (except at the end of the season, when a playoff seed has already been clinched) because one game is too important, and it could screw up the rest of the offense to have a quarterback rotation.



But I have a suggestion for one player who could pull it off: Indianapolis Colts safety Bob Sanders. A brutally hard hitter whose 5-foot-8 frame just wasn't built for the kind of collisions he puts it through, Sanders gets hurt every year: He had injury problems at Iowa and has missed half of the Colts' 48 games in his three years in the league. But when he's on the field he's great.

As we saw last season, the Colts are good enough to make the playoffs without Sanders (he played in just four regular season games), but they're not good enough to win the Super Bowl without him (he played in all four playoff games and the Colts' previously porous defense dramatically improved).

So here's what Tony Dungy should do: Have Sanders come to training camp, but put him in a red off-limits jersey and treat him like Peyton Manning: No one touches him in practice. Have him play in a few key regular season games (maybe just against the Patriots, the Jaguars and the Chargers) but tell him his primary job is to be sure he can go in January. Then set him loose.

There are risks to a strategy like this, of course, but those risks aren't as great as the risk of having Sanders suffer a serious injury in September that lands him on injured reserve. Roger Clemens' treatment from the Yankees is unheard of in the NFL, but it shouldn't be.