Quote:I guarantee you that the Jaguars are not one or two players away from fielding a contender. So the straw man you presented is not valid.

You don't know what a straw man is. And I never claimed that the Jaguars were one or two players away from fielding a contender.
 

Quote:If we were the Patriots, coming off a long string of winning seasons, your argument would have merit. Bill B. et al would not be in danger of losing their jobs if they made a few mistakes in free agency and/ or the draft. The Patriot's owner as well as the fan base would shrug their shoulders and say " next year will be better ". This GM and these coaches will not get that latitude.

Garbage. Firstly, gambling on a player and losing is not a mistake. Every move you make as a GM is a calculated risk. There's a (completely unknown) chance of each move paying off. If one GM makes a move which is 99% likely to improve his team massively and it goes wrong, and another makes a move which is 1% likely to improve his team massively and gets lucky, which GM made a mistake? Which is the better GM? Which should you pick to take your team forward?

Secondly, why hold GMs of different teams to different standards? The best teams want to have GMs who perform as well as they can. That's how they get to *stay* the best teams.
 

Quote:As to your point about my horse betting analogy, let me point out that any unspent money below the 89% threshold would not be " wasted ". First of all, the Jaguars cap managers are too smart to violate the 89% rule.......that won't happen. Secondly, given our overall talent level, it would be difficult not to be able to upgrade it ........if we fail, that's a serious black mark against our expertise in identifying and attracting talent. Third, if there was unspent money, it would be distributed to players on our roster already......sort of a windfall bonus. We wouldn't lose draft picks or face fines.

Ah, so losing draft picks or facing fines is the only way to waste money, and giving a nice big salary bonus to Chad Henne is a perfectly good use of it? Of course money distributed this way is wasted; the team should be determining where the money is spent.

As for the team being too smart to let it happen, that's exactly what they're doing by signing young players with a lot of potential to contracts, on the understanding that (as with any signing) some of them will probably not live up to that potential. But you think that's a horrible risk, for some reason.

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