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Jacksonville Jaguars

Jaguars pass on chance to unload Julius Thomas

The Jaguars make an early offseason surprise. They paid Julius Thomas $3 million on Friday. He’ll apparently be on their 2017 roster, and I didn’t see that coming – I figured they would admit their mistake an move on.

Thomas caught 12 TDs in each of his last two seasons in Denver, and Jacksonville signed him to a big contract, figuring they were getting something along the lines of another Rob Gronkowski or Jimmy Graham – or at least something not far behind those guys.

By not releasing Thomas on Friday, the $3 million bonus in his contract becomes guaranteed. It’s part of the five-year contract worth $46 million he signed after the 2014 season. They could have instead released him, replacing him in the draft or free agency. Per an article by a local TV station, Thomas is slated to make $7 million this year.

But Thomas has been a disaster. He’s had some injuries, and he hasn’t been particularly effective even when he’s been healthy and on the field. He’s not creating mismatch problems, he’s not threatening defenses downfield. His conditioning at times has appeared to be less than ideal (that’s a nice way of saying a guy’s out of shape).

It hasn’t happened at all, but the Jaguars are throwing good money after bad, hoping (apparently) that Thomas will somehow flip things around this year.

Prior to last year, John Elway chose not to pay Brock Osweiler, and that decision turned out to be a great one for the Broncos.

Backing up an additional year, Elway is now looking very astute for also choosing not to invest big money in Thomas.

Below are the stats for all tight ends who’ve seen at least 100 targets over the last two years. Of that group, Thomas ranks last in average yards per target. He’s caught only 76 of the 131 passes thrown his way, and they’ve resulted in only 736 yards. Some of that can perhaps be explained away to being saddled with erratic Blake Bortles, but truth is Thomas has underachieved.

Time will tell how it plays out, of course, but my guess is the Jaguars will regret not unloading Thomas.

TIGHT ENDS: YARDS PER TARGET (2015-16)
PlayerTgtNoYardsAvg/Tgt
Rob Gronkowski15897171610.86
Travis Kelce22015720009.09
Jimmy Graham16911315289.04
Greg Olsen25315721778.60
Cameron Brate111809488.54
Zach Miller110819258.41
Tyler Eifert1218110098.34
Jordan Reed20315316388.07
Eric Ebron15510812488.05
Delanie Walker23515918888.03
Gary Barnidge20713416558.00
Jacob Tamme112818677.74
Zach Ertz21815316697.66
Ben Watson110748257.50
Martellus Bennett15310811407.45
Jason Witten19914613866.96
Jared Cook126698586.81
Coby Fleener16510411226.80
Clive Walford102616886.75
Antonio Gates17810911786.62
Charles Clay16410810806.59
Kyle Rudolph20513213356.51
Will Tye132908596.51
C.J. Fiedorowicz113717266.42
Ryan Griffin108706936.42
Lance Kendricks123757446.05
Dennis Pitta121867296.02
Richard Rodgers132887815.92
Julius Thomas131767365.62

—Ian Allan

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