D’Joun Smith clears waivers, reverts to Colts injured reserve

One thing that flew a bit under the radar earlier today in regards to the waiver news (understandably so, since the Colts were awarded two players) was the fact that cornerback D’Joun Smith cleared waivers and has reverted to the Colts’ injured reserve list.

Smith was waived-injured by the Colts on Friday to clear up a roster spot as the Colts had to do something about the oft-injured corner. Their third round pick from last year’s draft, the team really spoke highly of him and seemed to like him, but his rookie season was plagued by a knee injury. He played in just four games in his rookie season and had a minimal impact, and then this offseason he again dealt with injuries. He saw very minimal time on the field during the preseason due to injuries, and the Colts couldn’t afford to keep an injured depth player on the 53-man roster with so many injured starters.

So the Colts waived-injured him. The injury this time around was reportedly an ankle sprain, which was reported as not being significant. The injury isn’t expected to keep him out for the season and in fact he could possibly return rather soon. If he cleared waivers and reverted to the team’s IR it was expected that he’ll be waived with an injury settlement, but Smith reportedly expected to be claimed. That didn’t turn out to be the case, however, and so instead he’s on the Colts’ IR - meaning it’s probably just a matter of time before he reaches an injury settlement with the team.

The injury settlement would allow him to look for work elsewhere when he’s healthy instead of having to stick around on injured reserve all year, but it should at least be somewhat concerning to him that he wasn’t claimed on waivers. A third round pick from just a year ago with an injury not considered to be significant wasn’t claimed by the 31 other teams in the NFL? In other words, he wasn’t deemed valuable enough to claim and keep for a short period of time while he gets healthy. That’s not exactly a great sign for him, by any means.