JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – As a freshman Cam Robinson came in and was Alabama’s starting left tackle from day one. After the sudden retirement of Branden Albert, Robinson is looking at a similar situation with the Jaguars.
On Monday Albert announced that he was walking away from football after nine seasons in the NFL. The former Kansas City Chief and Miami Dolphin was penciled in as the Jaguars starter at left tackle. The Jaguars drafted Robinson in the 2nd round of this year’s draft to be their left tackle of the future. Now that timetable has been significantly moved up.
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“Cam Robinson is in there now but we're not handing him the position,” said Jaguars head coach Doug Marrone. “He has to earn it.” Heading into training camp Marrone said the team hadn’t even discussed the possibility of Robinson playing anything but left tackle.
Had Albert worked out at LT the conventional thinking is that Robinson could move inside to left guard for his rookie season. Instead he’s now the front runner to be in charge of protecting Blake Bortles’ blind side.
“I'm just as surprised as everybody else,” said Robinson. “I had no idea Albert was thinking about retiring.”
Albert’s retirement has thrown a wrinkle into the Jaguars plan. They wanted it to be a competition between Albert and Robinson to see who would win the job at left tackle. Throughout the offseason program and the start of training camp Robinson has been working with the first and second team offense.
“Before I was just going to put those guys out there and see who the best player is,” said Marrone. “If it was real close and they’re both playing well. If I thought maybe one of them was better than the other four (offensive lineman) then they’d become one of the five. Then I think it would’ve been a matter of where we put them. But we never even got to that point.”
In most cases the speed of the game is the biggest adjustment that rookies have to make in getting acclimated to life in the NFL. However that’s the not the case for Robinson due to the time he spent at Alabama.
“Honestly the speed has been too big of a difference. I played at a pretty good college program. It hasn’t really been to devastating for me.”