(03-06-2018, 01:31 PM)Bullseye Wrote:

(03-06-2018, 01:24 PM)Tuxedo Wrote: I've been wondering if that's their plan as we could have told A-Rob way before that we weren't franchising him, but we waited to tell him until after Watkins was informed he wouldn't be tagged as well. Counterpoint is that we had to tell him today, anyways. That said, Watkins is the only other wide out on the market with true game changing potential, so it would make sense for us to swap A-Rob for Watkins if we do in fact covet him.

Otherwise I don't really get trading up to draft A-Rob and developing him only to let him go then do the same thing with another wide-out in this year's class. The whole point of draft and develop is to actually retain those players and it's not like wide receiver is a position of strength or are short on cap space either.

I agree with this overall.

As to your closing sentiment, I agree that the idea is to retain the players you draft and develop, but the realities of the salary cap is that if you build a potential super bowl caliber team as the Jaguars finally have done, eventually you have to choose which drafted and developed players you have to keep and which to let go.  You can't keep em all.

I agree with you that when you build a championship caliber team that you will eventually lose players to free agency, but those players should ideally be role players that other teams are looking to pay as front line starters and players coming from positions of strength (Colvin and Fowler both come to mind here) or players who while still playing well are nearing the end of their prime (Parnell and Church), not young players at important positions from the weak link on the team (offense in general here). I'd also argue that any of the cap space limitation we would have, which we don't right now, would be due to our massive free agent signees and acquisitions via trade, rather than through a draft and develop strategy.

This team has an abundance of cap space to re-sign A-Rob and can easily make more space at his exact position by releasing someone like Hurns, so it's more likely that they don't value him relative to the contract he's likely going to receive or believe they'll be able to replace his productivity with someone else. I think the former would be an error in judgement and the latter obviously remains to be seen.

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