(11-01-2018, 03:51 PM)Jags02 Wrote: If they cut Bortles after the season the team only saves a few mil. We're well over the cap having to cut one of our DLs just to get under, so we can't just hang onto the rest of his cap hit as dead money. We'd need that money to pay for a replacement at QB. With that in mind, I feel like the team either has to trade Bortles for a 6th or 7th round pick or else continue to start him in 2019. If a rookie QB were to replace him in say mid-2019, that would be ok. After that season we can cut him no sweat. For Blake to start the 2020 season, he'd have to play like he did in 2015 pretty much from here on out and especially next year. 

They wouldn't have put the offsets in there if they didn't envision a scenario where they'd end up cutting him.  I do believe the small guaranteed portion of his deal next year ($6.5 million) is basically going to force him to re-do his deal here if he wants to stay and start/mentor a rookie to take over next year.  They're simply not going to pay him $21 million next year based on where we're at with him at this moment.  If he goes on a run and we crawl our way back into the playoffs, maybe things change for him.  If they are forced to cut him next year, however, they'd only owe him the $6.5 million and probably less due to the offsets.

The dead money means nothing to Blake.  That's a team number.  They could easily tell him they'd like to keep him if he'll re-sign on a 1 or 2 year deal for $13 mil per year or some other arbitrary low end bridge QB salary which lowers the team's cap hit, guarantees Blake a much bigger pay day than he's currently guaranteed to get and if it's a 2 year deal they could have most if not all of the guarantees in year 1 so there is little to no dead money issue the following year.  The current deal provides the team leverage in not moving forward with his current deal one way or another.  If you're Blake and you're facing getting cut and making $6.5 million for 2019 or the team says we want you to stay for somewhere in the $13 to $15 million range and we'll fully guarantee it prior to training camp, which would you choose?  No one is trading anything for him at a $21 million salary for 2019 unless part of the trade involves him reworking his deal.  And even then, why would anyone want to trade for him based on his career to date?  Everything else has to be right for him to be successful consistently.  There's a lot of back ups in the league that could probably provide that for a lot less money.

Him playing on his current contract next year seems like a highly unlikely scenario to me right now.  Even the most anti-Bortles Jags fans shouldn't have a problem having him here next year at a much lower number in a bridge/mentor/eventual back up role.

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