Quote:The fact that the team can afford him due to its cap room shouldn't influence the decision to keep him or move on. If you have people who are not playing up to their salary, you need to correct it ASAP. Otherwise, it has the potential to create friction on the team from those people who are outplaying their pay checks.

This.  :yes:

 

Why would we want to keep someone who has been performing at a sub-par level for some time and pay him an above average pay check for it? It would make anyone who is performing well but not getting his kind of money angry! Even an average TE would out produce what we've come to expect from Mercedes Lewis. I notice that most of the better teams make significant use of their TE's as offensive weapons, while the Jag's have been 'hamstrung' for years with the performance of Mercedes.

 

We can either find someone at least as good as Lewis for a significantly lower cost (and I wouldn't think we'd need to look too high to find his performance equal), or get a significant upgrade from Lewis even if it costs more. Re-structuring Lewis's contract to more accurately reflect his level of performance would be good for the team financial bottom line, but it wouldn't actually help up grade the offense. If the goal is to actually upgrade the offensive weapons for Blake Bortles, then we need a significant upgrade from Mercedes Lewis. I can't see Mercedes remaining on the roster as I don't think he would be willing to re-structure his contract to the level needed to stay on in J'ville. Time to move on from Mercedes; he's had more than enough time here... too much, I'd say.

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