Healthy & Happy: Carlton Davis admits to playing with several injuries in 2016
AUBURN — Carlton Davis was able to walk into his team’s meeting room for media interviews with no noticeable limp, no arm in a sling or no body part needing treatment.
At one point during the 2016 season, the opposite was most certainly true as the junior cornerback suffered through an injury-plagued campaign where he was forced to be at less than 100 percent after the first game.
“It was frustrating, but it's a part of football,” Davis said Tuesday. “We all have nicks and bruises. Like I said, it's part of the game. Just go through it, fight through it the best way you can.”
Tray Matthews, a team leader and starting strong safety on the Auburn defense, dealt with separations with both shoulders in 2015. He knew he wasn’t able to practice at an optimal level and that translated to an average sophomore year. If anybody knew what Davis was going through last fall, it was his safety teammate behind in the secondary and Matthews said at Southeastern Conference media days that he expects a big rebound year from the 6-foot-1 defensive back from Miami.
“I can tell you that when you know you’re not 100 percent and you’re playing because you want to give something to the team, I respect that but I also know it’s not terrible feeling inside,” Matthews said. “I truly believe we never saw what he’s capable of yet because two years ago he was a freshman and we knew he was dealing with injuries last year.”
While not getting into detail Tuesday about the specifics, Davis was reportedly dealing with injuries involving his shoulder, both ankles and a finger situation that kept him out of the 2016 A-Day spring game. None of the injuries were serious enough to have him miss playing time, but they were significant enough to have the then-sophomore get picked on late in the year by veteran quarterbacks.
In its last five games against Division I-A schools, Auburn gave up an average of 297.6 passing yards per game. That was in most part to not having its shutdown corner be able to practice or play at anywhere close to 100 percent health.
“The corner depth has never been in question when we've got them all healthy and at this point in time we have them all healthy at corner,” defensive coordinator Kevin Steele said.
In his freshman season where he garnered All-SEC freshman team selections after recording three interceptions and 56 tackles, Davis wasn’t able to be the same playmaker on a defense designed to create takeaways in the back end of the secondary.
“He was telling me throughout the season that it was nagging him, but he was going to try to fight through it,” cornerback Javaris Davis said about his roommate and teammate. “But you could tell it was bothering him.”
Carlton Davis’ statistical lines being without interceptions last season exemplify not only his injuries but also portrays everything that Auburn is trying to improve this preseason with its entire defense. In spite of not being involved in only one turnover last season, Davis still garnered All-SEC third-team selection from Athlon’s magazine for his consistent play despite the physical limitations of his injured body.
“It's in their face all the time about takeaways,” Steele said. “What I'm saying is we established some criteria and got close to a lot of them and met a lot of them last year but the one thing is glaring, the one that is way off base is takeaways. We've got to generate more takeaways. I don't know how you emphasize it a lot more than we did last year but we've created more ways to do it.”
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By having Carlton Davis, Javaris Davis, Jamel Dean and Jeremiah Dinson all back from some injury in 2016, Steele expects the Auburn corner depth to be at an elite level as long as the quartet can stay healthy.
“As a whole, we feel like no one's really talked about the Auburn secondary,” Javaris Davis said. “We're trying to bring that back, and we're trying to be one of the best secondary groups not just in the SEC, but college football.”