Two weeks ago, the San Francisco 49ers announced they had re-signed cornerback Carlos Rogers to a four year contract. Normally the team provides the player in a conference call, but Rogers was unavailable to chat. Turns out he was enjoying some family time in the Bahamas.

Rogers recently returned to town and was made available to the media earlier this afternoon. You can listen to the audio of the interview at 49ers.com (transcript via Cam Inman). Rogers indicated he was already interested in returning to the team dating back to Week 4 or 5 of this season. That just about jives with his talk throughout the season about wanting to return to the team and willing to take a bit of a team discount to make it happen. He said he could have gotten a bit more on the market, but the situation was so good in San Francisco that he really wanted to come back.

The 49ers are returning their entire starting defensive unit, which is a first for Rogers. The 49ers defense did benefit from an insane turnover rate, but I remain convinced the aggressive nature of the defense could prevent that from being a true anomaly. I would not be surprised to see the turnover numbers come down a bit, but even still, this defense is aggressive by nature. They provide solid backup for each other to prevent too many big plays. While they do still give up some big plays, having quality backup options would seem to put them in a position to remain aggressive.

One thing I really liked about his comments was his mention of how he did not want to be one of those one and done players. He said next year he wants to earn another nod in the Pro Bowl and not simply get in off his reputation from 2011. It's easy to talk the talk, so hopefully we'll see him walk the walk in 2012. He has always been a fairly solid corner, but his big issue was catching the ball. He finally seemed to nail that down in 2011. While that did happen in a contract year, it is worth noting that he was also in a contract year the season before.