Jaguars Super Bowl window might already be closing is their vaunted defense descending

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Succe s is fleeting in the NFL and there might not be a better example right now than the , who are seeing their championship window slam shut right before their very eyes. Maybe it's better to call it a championship screen door? A gust of wind, the perfect conditions if you will, swung the door wide open, the Jaguars came within one whistle of storming through the door and just like that reality swooped in and slammed the door shut again. More on the NFL Things are obviously ugly: Jacksonville fired Nathaniel Hackett on Monday and benched on the same day. But it's going to get worse, as CBS Sports NFL Insider Jason La Canfora and I discu sed on Wednesday's Pick Six Podcast ( ).Everything is on the table for the future. Tom Coughlin could walk away for the comfort of a Virgin Mai Tai on the Ponte Vedra beach with his grandkids. That would lead to lots of questions about who is in charge moving forward. Or the former Jags coach turned football czar, hired last year ahead of the AFC Championship Game Ed Reed Jersey run, could stay and try to fix this situation. If he does that, no one is safe, from GM Dave Caldwell down through coach Doug Marrone and then onto the entire roster. Everyone should be in panic mode right now with the way Jacksonville is playing; Coughlin made that much clear when he appeared on 1010XL in Jacksonville Monday, lamenting the sorry state of the Jaguars on and off the field as they skidded into their seventh-straight lo s.But let's look at the sudden and swift demise of the Jaguars (watch them play the Colts on Sunday at 1 p.m. ET on CBS, or , try it for free) in a deeper-dive fashion, starting with the roster and the quarterback position. If you want to hear the discu sion just listen in the player below and subscribe already to get this daily dose of goodne s delivered to your podcast doorstep. Why didn't they get someone else this offseason?Fun fact: I named the Jaguars the No. 2 team that should trade for this offseason, as a backup and/or competition to Blake Bortles. Worst case he's an injury replacement or a "break gla s in case of emergency" quarterback option should Bortles falter. I'm not trying to claim I'm Mi s Cleo or anything here, but it was obvious to anyone outside the building that Jacksonville needed additional options. They literally laughed at my proposition and would later, according to La Canfora, literally scoff at the when New York called and offered Bridgewater for . (Bridgewater and Fowler would both later be dealt for a third-round pick each; it was a reasonable and fair trade offer by the Jets.)"When I said they scoffed at the Jets, they scoffed. It was literally like, PSSH, what, why are you calling us? Us? Huh? Need a quarterback? No, bro we've got Bortles and (Cody) Ke sler. Take that weak stuff somewhere else," La Canfora explained. "They literally -- they were offended almost by the mere prospect of someone looking to trade a potential starter and an immediate 1B guy if not the 1A guy in a lot of places."Why would you call us first? For Fowler? No, get out of here. See you later. They were literally offended by the proposition of why would you waste our time with this phone call? We're the Jaguars. We're on a mi sion to view the Super Bowl and we kept Bortles, didn't you see? Check our depth chart. We've got Ke sler too." In hindsight, this is obviously foolish. But you don't even need hindsight. Literally everyone who covers the NFL was questioning why the Jaguars stood pat with Bortles this offseason. Find me someone who doesn't wear teal-colored gla ses that thought differently, please. I'm waiting.What is Blake Bortles' future?Benched for Ke sler, Bortles would seem to obviously be done in Jacksonville. That woudn't be surprising, except not only did the Jags decide they wanted to roll one more year with the former first-round pick, . Credit his agent, Ryan Tollner, for getting this worked out, because Bortles was just on the fifth-year option, which would have given him an $14 million salary this year. Good money, but not as good as what Bortles pulled down with the extension.The former UCF standout now will earn $16.5 million in cash money for the 2019 season, whether or not the Jaguars have him on the roster. Cutting him this offseason will leave $16.5 million in dead money on the Jaguars salary cap. It's not a death knell the way it might have been five years ago, but it's a really superfluous use of the cap for a team that has some i sues in terms of cap space and needs to sign some younger players. You look at this contract now and it's unfathomable why the Jaguars did what they did. But there were people who defended it at the time. Smart move by Jaguars keeping Bortles rather than spending on Cousins. Now can keep team together Pete Prisco (@PriscoCBS) The Jags can designate Bortles a post-June 1 cut if they want and spread out the dead cap hit a little more. But then it would be $11.5 million in 2019 and $10 million in 2020. Again: wholly unnece sary.So who is the quarterback next year then?Great question. It's entirely po sible that Coughlin and others in the organization believe they are only a quarterback away. That might be a questionable state of mind, though. Trading for or with their contracts would be pretty expensive for a team with $16.5 million in salary cap space already committed to a quarterback who likely isn't on the roster. (If Bortles IS on the roster somehow, he will be taking up $21 million in salary cap space, so it's even le s feasible.) Instead, as La Canfora noted, it's "not an easy fix" and the Jaguars' "window has closed.""A lot of hubris there -- in the locker room and out -- that is coming back around and that looks like a team that could not handle even a modicum of succe s last year. From really that win against New England on, they have been a train wreck," La Canfora noted. "It's not an easy fix. You can throw out Bortles and Nathaniel Hackett in December if you want, but it's deck chairs on the Titanic. What did Tom Coughlin really sign up for? Is he really so stuck in -- this is a long rebuild."If they're naive enough that they think they go and plug in a Manning or a Flacco at age 36-ish and think that guy is going to make it OK because we really, really were that good, it was just Bortles and Hackett holding us back ... good luck with that. "The reality is for them is their window has closed."Here's the thing: he's not wrong. And this is something everyone should have seen coming before the season. , the Jaguars' star cornerback (who we will talk about more in a second) certainly saw it coming. From (emphasis mine):The Jaguars finished 10-6, winning their first division championship in 18 years. But Ramsey wasn't satisfied. "We gotta get it this year -- because next year, we can't keep all those Andre Johnson Jersey defensive linemen," he says. He tells me he was surprised the team didn't make more moves to bolster the offense. He also thinks the team should've taken a flier on a rookie quarterback.Ramsey likes to run his mouth aggre sively and one could even call those things speaking out of turn a bit in terms of questioning the front office's moves. But at the time Ramsey was the best cornerback in football and the Jaguars were flying high, planning a Super Bowl run.So, um, what about those defensive linemen?Well there are three good ones -- Fowler isn't a contract concern after being traded to the before the trade deadline -- and La Canfora believes two of them will be gone by the time 2019 rolls around." , , -- at least two of those three I don't see how they're back. They're way over the cap for next year," La Canfora said. The Jaguars are, right now, nearly $13 million over the salary cap for 2019. Cutting Bortles gets you down to $8 million over the cap. All three of those linemen account for nearly $40 million in salary cap space. Dareus can be cut without any penalty for dead money and would get them under the cap. Cut Jackson, save $11 million, and that gets you to $13 million under the cap. is a likely cut at just under $5 million with no dead money. They can get under the cap no problem, but Bortles' contract is going to make it an even tighter squeeze with those veteran lineman.Do they need to pay anyone?And then there's the Ramsey factor. The former top-five pick out of is finishing up his third season, which means he's now eligible to be given a long-term extension. Now, given what we know about Ramsey and given what we've seen from Ramsey, do you think he will a) quietly show up for training camp and just go about his busine s and play out his rookie contract OR b) do you think he will loudly make noise about wanting to be the highest-paid cornerback in the NFL (with some justification!) and take things down an uglier path in terms of making sure he gets paid before he plays?If I had to gue s, I would lean Option B. "If you don't pay Ramsey it's going to probably get ugly," La Canfora said. "And if you do pay Ramsey it could get ugly too; what does that mean for A.J. Bouye too, in terms of are you going to have two top five corners in the NFL in terms of cash commitments?"Plus, star pa s rusher is finishing up his third season as well and is going to want to get paid. , who has emerged as a dangerous young linebacker, is eligible for a new deal and he might be VERY interested in getting money while he's healthy, considering many thought his career could be in jeopardy before it began after he needed surgery before he left for the NFL and Dominic Proctor Jersey ended up falling to the second round (Jack would have gone top 10 if he was healthy).Then there's Fournette ... isn't eligible for a contract, but it's not likely the Jaguars would give him one anyway, considering he's been an i sue for this team. It's pretty obvious Coughlin was talking about Fournette when he made those "ridiculous" comments on the radio recently.But what can they do with him? You can't cut him because of his rookie contract. He could be traded, but who's trading for a running back with an injury history and a giant contract? "The running back is a problem. He's making like $8 million a year. It's really, really big running back money," La Canfora said. "It's not huge money at some other positions, but for a dude who is basically ... he's been more of a detriment than a help almost. If you look at how often he's on the field and some of the stuff that happens when he is."It's a situation to watch, but I'm not sure the Jags can do much other than stand pat with it this offseason. They have a huge amount of salary cap space -- relative to the position -- tied up in a quarterback who might not play for them and a running back who can't stay on the field for various reasons. Fournette is suspended for Week 13 against the after throwing punches in an ugly brawl during the lo s to the .To sum up ...The Jaguars are in big trouble from a roster and salary cap perspective. As JLC said, this is a team that is "descending." "They have a lot to sort out there. But the defense is descending now. It's not ascending. It plateaued last year. And not all the parts are going to be back, not all the parts should be back," La Canfora said. "They don't have a skill player on offense in the pa sing game that you would want to build around. Do you need (Donte) Moncrief? Even the kids they drafted, maybe it's hard to evaluate because the quarterback is so bad, but that's a bad football team, period. This is no fluke, a The Football Gods are against us kind of thing. "They have a culture i sue. I don't know -- I can't imagine you keep Marrone. I don't know what you do with the GM, Caldwell. The whole way it's set up right now kind of puts them in a bind. Tom Coughlin probably thought they were going to win something in two or three years and he's going to add to his Hall of Fame resume and then I'm out of here. I don't know. I would take my ball and go home, because I think it's diminishing returns for him there."There is a decent chance the Jaguars have a new GM, a new coach and a new quarterback by the time 2019 starts. They were one "Myles Jack wasn't down" whistle play away from playing against the in the Super Bowl last season and now they might be blowing everything up again.Windows close quickly in the NFL. And screen doors shut even faster.
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