Quote:My main issue is that we let Jones, Smith, and Knighton all go places where they didn't get huge paychecks, and then we replaced them at almost the exact same cost with worse players.
WIll T, was not going to be a contributor on a playoff team, and I understand Geno could be but we could have signed him and Smith and still been fine with money. Then signing Miller for the exact same amount that Knighton got paid is just ridiculous. Knighton is better than Miller is! Why let him go then pay a worse DT the same amount of money?!
It's already been pointed out in this thread that the Jaguars tried hard to bring Jones back, but he wanted to go to a team that had a chance to make a run of it (oops).
Regarding Knighton, the team didn't let him go because of talent concerns. Pot Roast is a talented player, no doubt about it. But he's also frequently in poor shape and was very obviously giving questionable effort throughout much of last year, which led to his demotion. If I'm David Caldwell, inheriting this team, do I want to re-sign a guy that I have serious effort and character questions about, or do I want to sign someone else who, I believe, is of similar talent level, but higher effort? The move clearly hasn't worked out as intended, and Miller doesn't look like a long-term answer, but it goes back to that same question: if you know a guy doesn't fit in, why would you re-sign him, regardless of price tag?
As far as Smith goes, I don't know how to say it any more plainly. He's a 31-year-old outside linebacker in a 4-3. In a 4-3, the OLB positions are typically the least important to have supremely talented players in. That's not to say that Smith isn't talented; he is, but we're 0-8 without him and you'd have a very hard time convincing me that we'd be 1-7 or better with him. If you know your defense is bad, and you know you're blowing the thing up and starting fresh, why would you spend $2 million on an aging linebacker instead of identifying a young guy with better athleticism who could use the reps to prove if he's a long-term option or not?
If Caldwell and Bradley had walked into a situation like the Chiefs, where the roster had 8-0 talent but 2-14 coaching, I'd share your dismay. Problem is that they inherited a 2-14 roster that, through a decade of careful and constant annihilation by Shack and Gene, was stocked with 0-8 talent. There was no way that the Jaguars were ever going to be competitive this year, and the team was commendably upfront about that fact throughout the offseason. Given how bad this roster is, it only made sense to dump the players who, for whatever reason, don't fit into the plans long-term and replace them with young guns who might.
