(03-12-2024, 05:28 PM)Jaguarmeister Wrote:

(03-12-2024, 05:20 PM)wassy04 Wrote: Surely though when signing the contract all this would've been fairly obvious. I think both teams would be aware this exact scenario could play out. The fact that he's been able to negotiate with other teams at all regardless of whether he really had intention to move justifies the deal.

What if he'd decided that he wanted to stay going into free agency but then a bunch of teams came in with mega offers that blew us out the water, at that point maybe he'd have changed his mind. Whereas without going into free agency he couldn't (legally) know what options were out there.

It feels like the whole legal tampering thing is pretty dodgy anyway. The deals happen way too quickly to suggest they'd previously had no contact so not sure this is that different.

It just boils down to:  Do you want to keep your 2nd rounder or do you want to potentially have to argue with the NFL to keep your 2nd rounder?  I'm going to err on the side of caution every time and just go with the first option.  

To your point about the legal tampering period, yeah, all it did was push the illegal tampering earlier.  The legal tampering period is now effectively the beginning of free agency with the technical beginning of free agency still being the date of the new league year which is what contracts are generally based on including our trade with the falcons for Ridley.

If I was arguing the Jags side though I would point out that Ridley was an available FA and if he had received a huge offer from someone then he would most likely accepted, however the only other offer we know of is from the Patriots who are a bad team with a 1st year HC and no QB. He chose to return to Jacksonville (if he does). Don't get me wrong it would look very much that we found a way around giving up a 2nd rounder but you could easily argue there wasn't collusion and that Ridley chose us.

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