Could Trevor Lawrence Spurn the Jags for the Jets?

Suppose I win Powerball and say I don't want the money, donate it to some needy people like Elon Musk, Marc Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet.

 

Thinking the tank was in the bag was an error in judgement by the front office. It's really hard to lose 16 games, and we were only even 0-13 because of some extremely lucky breaks at the end of the Raiders and Pats games. You don't leave a franchise-altering prospect up to chance when you're 3 games away from getting him. You think the Patriots thought they NEEDED to film other teams or deflate balls to win? No, but when you add together all of the little shady things they do it adds up to a lot more wins over the course of decades. The NFL is insanely competitive, there's a ton of money at stake. To be the best you often have to get a little creative.

Gase was going to be fired regardless, it's not like he's been a great coach for us and we're deciding to give him the axe in this hypothetical because he beat the Rams.

 

There is a -28737263% chance of this happening.

 

The way the Jags do this, if for some reason they decide they want to, is they take Lawrence on the #1 and then they follow the draft down until they're at a place where trading Lawrence for the current pick plus a haul is possible. They take Wilson with that pick.

Nobody is going to take Wilson until pick 6 or 7 at the outside. Probably he'll still be available at 10.

The only teams likely to have the draft capital to swing a deal for Lawrence after the Jags have taken him who might also want to to trade for a QB are the Jets, the Falcons, the Panthers and the Eagles.

With the Jets that might happen after another trade down in the the top 10. They'd have all kinds of juicy packages available from the extra picks the trade down gave them plus the extra picks from the Jamal Adams trade. Given the weak roster it is unlikely the Jets would entertain a big package for Lawrence at this point.

The Falcons might be looking for Lawrence as Matt Ryan's heir apparent. They might be willing to deal 1st and 2nd 2 years running to do that. They have more pieces currently available to support that kind of move with 3 1st round picks on the OL, Calvin Ridley and Julio Jones still in the picture. However they're also having a crappy season, their 3rd in a row, and they might just want to rebuild normally at this point.

The Panthers have the 4 pick at this point to center a potential deal around. They have a couple of deep flyers at WR and a questionable OL. They have a journeyman QB who clearly is a complementary piece in Teddy Bridgewater. They have a bunch of recent first and second round picks in their defense which has been banged up this year. They could squint a bit and see Lawrence as worth a pretty package of picks once their injured players return. It would likely be a bad move but I think it is the most likely of the scenarios I'm giving. Their package again would be the #4 plus the 2nd rounder this year which could be as low as #38, plus their 1 and 2 next year. The #4 has a lot of value in this draft so it is unlikely that the Jags could get much more out of the Panthers.

The Eagles would almost certainly include the #7 plus Carson Wentz plus additional picks if they made a move for Lawrence. Their argument, rightly or wrongly, would be that Wentz has been a good NFL QB albeit injury-prone up to this season. That he needs a change of scenery and is a clear upgrade over what the Jaguars having been playing at QB recently. That argument wouldn't stop the Eagles from having to give up probably this and next year's first round picks to get it done. The Jags might see Wentz plus one of the star WR's in this draft plus another likely high pick as the Eagles deal with Lawrence's growing pains as an appealing way to go for a franchise that is just as morose as the Jets.

The point of all this is that the one thing the Jags will not do is just take Wilson. That would be the kind of boneheaded move that makes GM's instant roadkill if it fails. Rookie QB's can look like abject failures in year one without actually being all that damaged. But if the guy taken right behind them is lighting it up, well that's a management team that doesn't need to worry about which parking spot they are getting next year.

 

I dont see the reason why he'd do this. Maybe I could see the argument if a legitimate organization was picking 2. The Jets and the Jaguars are basically in the same tier of organizations. They're both awful.

We as Jets fans have to just accept what happened last week. The Jets need to focus on surrounding whoever the QB is with talent. I'd rather have the second best QB prospect with a strong team around him, than the best with no talent anywhere else.

 

Won't happen, but what could happen is Fields leads Ohio State to a national championship by beating Clemson and Alabama. Then the Jags might be convinced that he is the guy they want and Lawrence falls to us.

 

Many different paths this offseason can take..

 

And we as Jets fans, along with the rest of the teams' fans, absolutely crushed them for doing all of that. There were investigations and, had there been any truly compelling evidence, there would have been much more severe sanctions than what the Patriots ultimately had levied against them.

If the Jets were to have done this, and it was discovered (and it would be), then there would be severe reprocussions. First and foremost, Gase would have a legitimate wrongful termination suit to file against the Jets. You'd also have a very hard time hiring a new coach after this because he's have to be looking over his shoulder the entire time to wonder if there were forces conspiring against him in the front office and ownership, on top of the fact that many wouldn't take the job just based on principal after what had been done to Gase. This would be different that the usual things we talk about here with regards to having difficulty hiring a new coach, where we usually hear people say that if the coach is concerned about certain issues with the organization and isn't all in on being with the Jets, then we don't want him. This wouldn't be that, it would be a legitimate concern that, no matter what you do in terms of getting the team to win, that there could be forces conspiring against you in the front office.

Then there's the NFL investigation. This would be tantamount to throwing games. You'd have a situation where you've fired a coach for winning and installed a pupped HC in order to lose. For all of the screaming that people did about fraud when it came to Deflategate, this would be actual fraud on the part of the Jets, and perhaps the only defense that the Jets would have to getting out of it would be that there aren't any fans in the stands because of the pandemic, therefore the ticket issue doesn't come into play.

Using the final games of an unproductive season to play younger players in an effort to evaluate them is one thing. That's what responsible organizations should do, but during that you are still trying to win the game. This proposed scenario is not that. It's the intentional throwing of games.

 

I honestly don't see how anyone would have found out about it other than the puppet HC saying something, and why would he do that? He'd be incriminating himself. Is CJ or the GM going to tell on themselves? What evidence could even be produced? You tell the puppet HC in person that he needs to lose and you pay him when the #1 pick is secured. It would've been trivial to pull off.

 

Things like that always have a way of coming out. Maybe the puppet HC doesn't get the job he expected or was promised by the Jets in return for doing what he's doing. Maybe he gets cold feet. Someone in the front office close to Douglas or Christopher Johnson catches wind of it. They make a mistake of writing it down. Someone becomes suspicious of the Jets firing Gase in the first place, as it's pretty well known to be a policy of the Johnsons not to fire coaches in season. Moves by the new HC come under heavy scrutiny if they seem to run counter to the idea of winning football games. There are a lot of different ways that it could get out. No organization is airtight.

Then, after all of that, you still haven't guaranteed the tank, which is what we're supposedly criticizing Douglas for in the first place. What happens if Morgan goes out there and surprises everyone and plays lights out and gets the Jets off to a hot start. What happens then? Does the HC pull him and put in Flacco? That runs counter to the impression you'd be trying to sell to the public that you're playing the younger guys. Does the new HC start calling simple dive plays each and every play to avoid the QB from making plays? On the flip side, if Ty Johnson comes out the gate hot and runs all over the defense, does the gameplan shift to a pass-heavy approach? Doing this things would also raise suspicions, and all while still not guaranteeing the tank.

 

These are good points. I still think it's very unlikely it would've gotten out if choosing a trusted puppet HC and not ruffling his feathers after. Even if he said something down the line, what proof would he have? You have "the conversation" with him in person once and he gets cash once after it's done.

Regarding it being obvious that a tank was occurring - I think it's an overblown concern. Nobody was going to pick up on any sort of patterns over 3-5 games and I think it'd be pretty easy to figure out how to ensure losing while also not making it obvious. The Jaguars have started 3 different QB's this year. By choice, not under guise of injury even. Just being ultra conservative with your offensive playcalling alone would go a long way towards guaranteeing a loss.

I also just don't think the league really cares that much about tanking to do anything about it unless you make it completely blatant. The Jaguars are clearly tanking and the Dolphins clearly did last year. Nobody cares.

 

The Jaguars have been competitive in a good number of their games this season. If they were throwing games, they wouldn't be putting Minshew back in, who gives them a better chance to win than their other QBs. The Dolphins were not tanking last year. The GM began the demolition process on a complete rebuild. It might have looked like it at the start of the season, but it's obvious that Flores wasn't in on it and he managed to lead them to a 5-11 record. It's one thing for the front office to tear the team down in an effort to begin a rebuild. Getting rid of bad contracts and tearing it all completely down and suffering some short term pain to set the franchise up for long term success is not the same thing as the people on the field, the head coach included, deliberately losing football games.

The Jaguars this season are clearly trying to win their games. Marrone needs to win to save his job and the players are trying to impress whoever the new GM ends up being so that they can potentially be a part of his 2021 plans. Minshew definitely isn't going out there to tank, because his job status is directly tied to the results. If he can win a game out of the last two, he stands a much better chance of being on the 2021 roster and in the discussion for the QB1 job. If he loses out, he loses his job to Trevor Lawrence.

The 2019 Dolphins were trying to win, despite being at the start of the rebuild. They started out the season getting blown out, like a lot of teams that are in the beginnings of a rebuild do, but they progressively got better as the season went. The blowouts stopped after their Week 5 bye and from that point, they won five of their last twelve games and their largest margin of defeat was 17-points (in consecutive weeks to the Bills and Browns), and actually had a winning record from Week 9 to the end of the season (5-4). Despite people ripping them for tanking in the beginning of the season, it's clear that they were not doing that, but rather going through the kind of rebuild that Joe Douglas has begun this year with the Jets. Unfortunately, our first season of the rebuild didn't go as well as theirs did, but they did it the right way by starting it all with a new coach rather than having to spend a year tearing it down only to then have to turn around in Year 2 of the rebuild with a new coaching staff (we hope).

 

To all the posters who were concerned about the Jets getting investigated if they were to have sat players, shouldn't the NFL be investigating the Jaguars right now?

 

That sounds so unlikely even if Fields throws 10TDs in 2 games

 

Not happening.....all that would do is increase the bounty we get for the 2nd pick overall if we trade it.

If you read the Jaguars message boards and local papers, they are NOT trading out of the #1 pick or Trevor. He's practically from their own backyard in Georgia like 3 hours drive away.

 

Some tank, they got hot the final 8 games and beat the Patriots. They slid from the #1 pick overall to the #5.

They STILL got Tua !!

So good things happen to teams that do things the right way -- sometimes (don't see: Pittsburgh Penguins, 1984). The NY Rangers just go the #2 and #1 overall picks the last 2 years by refusing to lose games and increase their odds the last 2 regular seasons.

 

I wouldn't wish that on anyone else's fanbase outside of NE or Miami, but it's actually slightly more likely he pulled a power play to get away from the London Jaguars than he would have to get away from the Jets. I don't even know if I'd really want that to happen though, it'd cost a shit ton even to go up from 2 to 1 and we need a LOT of other things to even hope to make TL successful.

 

He just doesn’t seem like that type of guy.. also he said he’s ready for any challenge in front of him..

 

Under the current system you really can't fault a team for trying to lose out. The draft system should be changed to remove certainty from the equation.