(03-19-2021, 08:38 AM)The Real Marty Wrote:

(03-18-2021, 06:05 PM)TheDuke007 Wrote: I can't believe all of the excuse making on this board.  The Jaguars have sucked before in their history and they had no problems signing free agents in the off season.  Players overwhelmingly follow the money.  It's true that occasionally a player might take less to go to a certain place, but that's the exception.  When it happens, you move to the next best player.  You don't make signing a kick returner, a special teams gunner and a 30+ year old failed running back your priorities.

Yes, the Jaguars have sucked before in their history and they had no problems signing free agents in the off season.  That is true.  What is also true is that, aside from one very lucky year, 2017, we made all those free agent signings and yet we continued to suck.  

What has probably happened this year is that we decided not to offer the kind of money that would be required to persuade some of the higher profile free agents to come here.  There's nothing wrong with that.  We have apparently decided to use free agency to fill holes, and build the team long-term through the draft.  All you guys who wanted the team to overpay so we could get the guys you wanted are being short-sighted.  Overpaying for high profile free agents is not the way to build a team for the long term.  It's obvious to me that Meyer/Baalke are not doing the one-year plan.  They are thinking more long term.

We live in the age of the salary cap.  It's the same for every team.  It's a limited resource.  If you overpay for one guy, that is a waste of limited resources.  You have to allocate your salary cap to the entire roster, not just a few guys.

You are clearly someone who was a long time reader of Vic Ketchman.  Like O-Zone, he was an employee of the Jaguars and his job was to argue that every bad decision the Jaguars made was actually good.  Vic was good at his job.  There were years when the Jaguars signed little free agents.  He had to spin that as positive.  He did it by confusing his readers with faulty logic.  Yes, "build through the draft" was one of his very common phrases.  The problem with his logic is that no GM in the history of the NFL has ever said "I want a terrible draft.  I am going to intentionally only take busts!"  Every team wants and tries to have a good draft.  Free agency doesn't prevent that.  We currently have 10 draft picks.  If we had signed Jonnu Smith, we would still have 10 draft picks.  In no way does that force us into bad drafting.  If anything, it might have helped our upcoming draft as it would have made it easier to go BAP and reduce the temptation to reach for a tight end out of need.  

I know some will notice that many good teams have a bunch of draft picks on their roster and not many free agents.  This is probably true.  However, Vic then wants to confuse you into believing that the lack of signing free agents caused them to be good.  That is false.  Vic is wanting you to confuse cause and effect.  If you draft well and do so consistently year after year, you'll eventually have good players coming off their rookie contracts.  That forces you to re-sign them.  If you re-sign enough of them, you won't have any money for free agency.  However, that's ok, because you drafted good players and you have them and probably at a good price.  On the other hand, if you draft poorly, you either release your draft picks, don't re-sign your draft picks or re-sign them for smaller amounts of money because that's all their worth.  As such, you will likely have more money to spend in free agency and therefore these teams will sign more free agents.  It's not that signing free agents causes you to draft badly, it's that drafting badly creates the cap space that lets you sign more free agents.  Your goal is to draft so wonderfully that you never sign another free agent.  That's the dream, but often isn't reality.  If you do miss on picks and have money under the salary cap, the smart thing is to minimize the damage by signing free agents.  It's making the best of a bad situation. You can cry over spilled milk all you want, but it doesn't put the milk back in the glass.  Not signing free agents won't magically erase past draft mistakes.

Let me walk you through an example since so many people seem confused about this concept.  

In 2017, the Jaguars drafted Leonard Fournette and the Chiefs drafted Patrick Mahomes.  Fournette was a bust and is no longer on the team.  Patrick Mahomes is arguably the best player in the NFL.  Because Fournette is no longer on the team, he costs us nothing.  Patrick Mahomes has a contract that averages $45 million per year over the length of it.  Because the Jaguars don't have that contract, they have more money under the salary cap.  Would I prefer Mahomes?  Absolutely.  Any sane person would.  However, someone has yet to invent a time machine.  We can't go back in time and draft Mahomes.  We can't trade Fournette for Mahomes.  We have to deal with the situation as it exists today.  The situation today is that we'll be saving $45 million compared to the Chiefs.  That's money we can spend on free agents.  With some of that money, they signed Shaquill Griffin for $13 million per year.  Did signing Griffin cause us to not draft Mahomes?  No!  Would not signing Griffin somehow magically let us acquire Mahomes?  No!  Did signing Griffin mean that we can't draft Trevor Lawrence and we must intentionally take busts in the draft going forward?  No!  What would have been the effect of not signing Griffin?  It would have left our roster with an inferior player at the cornerback position.  Griffin won't solve all of our problems, but it's a step in the right direction to improve the roster.  If we have the cap available (and we do), I want to take more steps to improve the roster. The goal is to get the best roster that you can.

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