Nine of every ten snaps: Jonas Sanker's fast week in the Blitz secondary

Saturday night, from outside the fence, I watched the defensive backs taking the first-team snaps for the Inexperienced Blitz, and one of them hadn't been on the team at lunch.

That was Jonas Sanker. A few hours earlier he had been a free agent. Now he was in the starting group, and Derwin James Jr., the man whose spot he was standing in, was at the back of the line, ruled out for the weekend with a hamstring.

I have covered a lot of roster moves. Most of them are a line in the agate and a shrug. This one I keep turning over, because of the clock. Saturday at suppertime, nobody's. Saturday night, first team. Sunday, a starter.

And not a token starter, either. When the snap counts came in, Sanker had played 69 snaps for New Orleans on Sunday, 90 percent of the defense's plays, up from 68 percent the week before. He hasn't dipped below 59 percent all season. Whatever else you want to say about how the Blitz found him, they did not sign a guy who stands on the sideline holding a clipboard. They signed a guy who is on the field nine plays out of ten.

I want to be careful here, because this is exactly the kind of story where a reporter starts writing a movie. I don't know where Sanker was when he got the call. I don't know whether he was thrilled, annoyed, tired, or just hungry. I asked him, and I'd still love ten minutes, but he doesn't owe me those minutes, and I'm not going to put feelings in his mouth that he hasn't put there himself.

Here is what I can tell you, because I saw it: he was there, he was with the starters, and he took the reps. That's it. I was outside the fence, not in the huddle, and I'm not going to pretend I could read a man's face from that distance or tell you what the coaches said to him. What I saw was small. It's also not nothing. Most new arrivals start at the back of the line and work their way up. Sanker started at the front.

His first Sunday for the Blitz was not a highlight reel. He finished with a tackle, an assisted tackle and a pass defensed. That's a modest line, and the Blitz lost to the Annihilators, 118.82 to 99.44, so nobody is building a statue. But think about what that line actually is. It's a player who had known the people around him for roughly a day, in the middle of the play, doing his job. I'll take that over a flashy line from someone who doesn't know where to stand.

Now the harder part, and the part I can't answer.

What happens when Derwin James comes back?

James has not taken a snap since Week 3. He's been ruled out with the hamstring. That's all I know about it, and I am not going to guess at a timetable, because the only people who know it aren't telling me, and the injury report doesn't run on my hunches. What I can say is that the hole behind him is real, and the Blitz didn't fill it with a long look or a camp body. They filled it with a player who was ready that same night.

My read, and it's only mine: the Blitz wanted an answer, not a project. You don't put a man with the first team a few hours after he signs unless you expect him to be standing there on Sunday. Why him and not someone else, I don't know, and nobody has told me. Echo Paden, who owns the club, hasn't spoken about it.

None of that makes Sanker a placeholder, and none of it makes him James's replacement for good. A move made in an emergency is not a verdict on the injured man. I've seen beat writers decide a starter lost his job because somebody else had one good week. I'm not doing that. What I'll say instead is that the Blitz now have a question they didn't have a week ago, and it's a good question to have: if James gets healthy, is Sanker the depth that lets them breathe, or does he push for snaps? We'll find out on the field, not in my notebook.

The more immediate question is Sunday. Dandy comes to town at 3-3, losers of two straight. The Blitz are also 3-3, one game behind Injury Prone in the Delta, and nobody in the division has scored more points.

Jordan Hale, who covers the whole Delta for us, thinks the Blitz are the team in the division whose record is lagging their scoring. He also told me he sees Weeks 8 through 10, home against the Dragons, Injury Prone and the Strikers, as tailor-made for the Blitz to close that gap, and that Dandy matters more as a tune-up than as a standings game.

I'll take the first two points. The arithmetic is on Jordan's side, and that three-week home stretch is the kind of schedule you circle in October. I'll push back on the third. There's no such thing as a tune-up at 3-3. A team that has dropped two in a row is a team that's tired of hearing about it, and if the Blitz treat Sunday like a scrimmage, it'll be a long ride into that home stretch. Jordan and I can argue about it over coffee. Either way, Sanker is going to be standing in the middle of it, probably on the field nine plays out of ten.

Which brings me back to that Saturday night.

I've spent two days trying to get the person behind this transaction to tell me about it, and I'm not there yet. So here is what I have, and I think it's a better story than any I could make up. A defensive back went from nobody's to somebody's in the space of an evening, was with the starters that same night, and played almost every snap on Sunday. He hasn't told me how it felt. Maybe someday he will. For now, the most honest thing I can write about Jonas Sanker is that the Blitz asked him to be ready, and he was.