Quote:Not so much an "expanded" salary cap, per se. 

 

Starting from scratch, they naturally had more cap room than anyone else to sign free agents.  With the new stadium, abundance of club seats, etc., the Jaguars were amongst the league leaders in income at one point, so that helped too.

 

But I still maintain it wasn't the free agency excess that was the true cause of the Jaguars collapse, but draft day failures from 1995-1999 that led to the collapse of the team at that point.

 

The team missed on high round draft picks like 1995 2nd rounders RT Brian DeMarco  and LB Bryan Schwartz, and 3rd rounder S Chris Hudson.

 

The team missed on 1997 2nd round pick S Mike Logan, 3rd round pick LB James Hamilton.

 

All of these guys should have been hitting their primes in 1999-2000 and been around to provide veteran leadership in the early 2000s.

 

These misses led directly to free agency signings of T Leon Searcy, LB Lonnie Marts, Hardy Nickerson and Eddie Robinson, Bryce Paup and Carnell Lake.

 

Not only did they overpay to fill the holes created by those misses, but they created an older team on top of that.  Having to sign older players for veteran leadership increased the chances for FA misses.

 

This pattern of draft misses followed by FA signings continued through the Shack and Jack era (missed on Reggie Williams and Matt Jones to sign WR Jerry Porter), through the Gene Smith era (Missed on DEs Derrick Harvey and Quentin Groves to sign DE Aaron Kampman).  Draft misses have dictated the FA approach of Caldwell to a degree.

 

The moral of the story:  Hit on the draft picks, save in free agency and reduce the risk of a FA bust.

The Jags and Panthers were given extra draft picks and a full salary cap to spend on free agents.  The league learned their lesson because the next time they expanded, they didn't give Cleveland or Houston anything close to the advantages that they did to the class of '95. 

 

We're in agreement that the salary cap was badly mismanaged by Coughlin & Co. over the first several years as they had more misses than hits in the draft and in free agency. 

 

I think the lessons were learned, even though the characters running the show have changed completely from those days.  The mindset was already in place to manage the salary cap in a very controlled manner.  It'll be interesting to see how they go about spending all of this money they have to unload this off season.  My guess is that while there may be a good portion of it dedicated to free agency, that a pretty significant chunk will be used to extend the contracts for guys they've identified as foundational players they want to continue to build around.  I don't think they're going to go nuts in free agency, but they still need to spend that money. 

 

My guess is that they'll find ways to continue to hoard a portion of it using contractual language in any extensions they do allowing them to recoup some of the money using incentives not likely to be earned.  People who expect them to blow the bulk of that $60 million in free agency are bound to be disappointed in the reality, but if you look at the free agency market, the team may not be able to spend all that money.  Then what?  I'm sure they'll find a way to stay compliant while allowing them to quietly push forward whatever they can to future years. 

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