Leonard Fournette Clears NFL Waivers As Jaguars Tank Position Booms | Launderer report

January 21, 2018. Foxborough, Massachusetts.

The New England Patriots are down. The Bill Belichick dynasty appears to be on the ropes with an aging Tom Brady unable to move the ball against the NFL’s best defense, the Jacksonville Jaguars.

A team that once dislodged sections of its stadium due to lack of fan interest. A team that was once the laughing stock of the NFL after several failed draft picks and off-season moves. This team, at the start of the fourth quarter, had a 20-10 lead over the greatest coach and quarterback to ever play the game.

But then the Patriots restored order. Brady and Belichick led a fascinating comeback for a 24-20 victory.

The New England dynasty continued. The Jacksonville race never started.

This is the story of the collapse of this team, with the exit of running back Leonard Fournette this week marking the end of that era.

The 25-year-old cleared the waivers on Tuesday after a long wait, per Tom Pelissero of NFL Network.

Fournette, fresh off the best statistical year of his career with 1,152 rushing yards and 76 catches, is out although he is only owed $ 4.2 million in 2020 base salary and be 25 years old. Running backs have become somewhat disposable in the modern NFL, but not like this.

Even though the front office was ready to move from the No.4 pick to the 2017 draft, the Jaguars’ inability to return Fournette for the picks is concerning. Rival NFL executives know the environment is bad enough in Jacksonville that if a player isn’t traded and wants out, they will simply be released. This means that adding a part like Fournette becomes cheaper for a candidate.

He now has his pick of NFL teams as a free agent. As news of Fournette’s compensation waiver crept in, Josina Anderson reported that the New Orleans Saints are now “open” to running back Alvin Kamara:

Fournette is from Louisiana and played at LSU from 2014-2016. A homecoming in New Orleans could be a possibility, but the Pittsburgh SteelersThe Washington football team, the Chicago Bears and the Los Angeles Rams have also been linked with Fournette. And he would stimulate them all without a doubt.

There is still a lot to love about Fournette, especially for teams interested in short-term rentals. As a free agent, he’s not commanding a long-term deal, but rather a proving deal that can deliver tremendous value for a hard-nosed racing team.

If the Baltimore Ravens didn’t have running back talent, or the Tennessee Titans didn’t have Derrick Henry, this is the type of back they were looking for. Teams looking to emulate the playing style of either club in the racing game would be wise to watch Fournette. That includes the NFC champions San Francisco 49ers, given their running back body health.

To understand not only the exodus of Fournette and others, but how and why the Jaguars went from a fourth quarter lead in the AFC Championship game to a team many NFL insiders believe to tank to get better draft picks, we have to look just at how different the team is today compared to that night about three years ago.

Quarterback Blake Bortles? Finished after the team doubled up by signing him a contract extension in 2018 and refusing to believe the 2014 No.3 overall pick was a draft failure – a belief that led GM Dave Caldwell and the chairman of team Tom Coughlin to pass the quarters Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson for Fournette in the 2017 draft.

John Raoux / Associated Press

Fournette’s rookie season saw him rushing for over 1,000 yards and leading a talented cast of talented young players, but of that group only Keelan Cole and Dede Westbrook remain, and neither will appear in the future at long term of the team as free agents after the 2020 season.

The 2017 Jags weren’t on the attack, however. They had the best defense in the NFL, allowing the second fewest points per game (16.8) and fewest passing yards per game (169.9) while also ranking second in interceptions (21). The D was stacked.

But like Will Smith in the final series of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Myles Jack is the only key contributor left from a defense that has kept Brady and Belichick a secret.

Telvin Smith has quit football. Jalen Ramsey has been traded. Calais Campbell has been traded. AJ Bouye has been traded. Dante Fowler Jr. has been traded. And Yannick Ngakoue was traded barely two days ago.

Every star player, minus Jack, is gone. And while you might watch the cast of characters shipped out of town and assume the team was taking on draft picks to replace them … you forget Caldwell and Co.’s mediocre project record for round picks for them. Caldwell’s first six years as Jacksonville general manager:

2013 – Luke Joeckel
2014 – Blake Bortles
2015 – Dante Fowler Jr.
2016 – Jalen Ramsey
2017 – Léonard Fournette
2018 – Taven Bryan

Not all bad choices, of course, but the foundation of the team should have been laid over those years, and instead it’s a hollowed-out shell with only Bryan still on the roster and not exactly putting fire to the world.

Caldwell alone is not to blame. In fact, the hiring (and firing) of football czar Tom Coughlin is one of the main reasons this team fell apart, according to league sources.

Coughlin, two-time Super Bowl winner with the New York Giants and the Jaguars’ first coach – was supposed to establish a tough, winning culture when ownership brought him to essentially manage Caldwell in January 2017. And early results looked positive as Caldwell worked with Doug Marrone, both of whom reported to Coughlin , and led the team to the AFC title game.

But the seeds sown by Coughlin – famous for “if you’re five minutes early, you’re late” and an outdated approach to player relations – would be the downfall of the team.

Doug Marrone and Tom CoughlinJohn Raoux / Associated Press

“It got to the point,” said a top agent who represented the players at Jacksonville, “where we knew there was no way our guys would re-sign there. loved living in Florida and loved their teammates, it was just a bad environment. “

Coughlin’s old school mentality didn’t fit in with New School players, with one unnamed player going so far as to tell us that players were not allowed to express themselves in any way. A former player said: “We weren’t told not to have dreads or to listen to rap music, but it was talked about a lot. [Coughlin] I just didn’t like a lot of young players. “

To fuel the fire, the NFL Players Association went so far as to warn players not to sign with the Jaguars after the team was accused of mismanaging an injury to Fowler.

This letter would lead to Coughlin’s dismissal by owner Shad Khan, but the damage was done.

The once proud defense was torn apart with Ramsey and Ngakoue forcing them out of town and the other coins being sold for coins. And while there are promising young pieces for a rebuild in place with 2019 first round Josh Allen and 2020 firsts CJ Henderson and K’Lavon Chaisson, swapping Ngakoue and relinquishing Fournette has convinced rival teams that the Jaguars try to win by losing.

“Oh, they’re tanking,” said a local scout familiar with the Jaguars organization. “You can call it a culture shift or whatever they want, but at some point you have to blow it up to rebuild, and that’s what they do.”

There is a belief in the NFL today that the only way to win is with an elite quarterback on a rookie contract or a Hall of Famer in the job. With two first-round picks and two second-round picks in the 2021 draft, they are able to attack a draft class loaded with intriguing quarterback prospects.

Whether it’s Trevor Lawrence (Clemson), Trey Lance (North Dakota State) or Justin Fields (Ohio State) as the quarterback of the future, the organization will be very different from the one that had a lead on the Patriots in the AFC. title game.

Matt Miller covers the NFL and NFL Draft for Bleacher Report.