This NFL offseason, Steven Ruiz will be offering his thoughts and grading every major deal that goes down, including contract extensions, trades and free-agent signings.
And there goes another key member of the 2017 Jaguars defense. Jacksonville said goodbye to another star from it’s most successful team this century when it agreed to a trade that will send CB A.J. Bouye to Denver for a fourth-round pick.
Bouye spent three seasons with the Jaguars after signing a five-year, $67 million contract with the team in 2017. He was among the best No. 2 corners in the game over the first two years of that deal but his play seemed to tail off after Jalen Ramsey was dealt to the Rams midway through the 2019 season.
The Broncos were in need of a cornerback with mainstay Chris Harris Jr. slated to hit free agency in a few weeks. Bouye will certainly fill a hole on the roster, but did Denver get him at a good price? And how did the Jaguars make out in this one?
Let’s grade the deal…
Let’s start with Jacksonville. Bouye was never in the team’s plans for 2020. He was going to cost the Jaguars $15.5 million in cap space and the taem was already up against the salary cap. Had they failed to trade him, Bouye would have been cut, according to multiple reports. Getting anything for him has to be considered a win for Jacksonville. A fourth-round pick isn’t much, but the Jaguars picked up some free draft capital while saving $11.4 million in cap space in the process.
Even if Bouye bounces back after a down year in 2019 and returns to Pro Bowl form, his career timeline doesn’t really match up with Jacksonville’s. Bouye has only two years left on his contract and he’ll be 30 by the time it expires. The Jags are in rebuild mode and by the time they’re ready to contend, Bouye would be on the way out anyway.
From a football standpoint, this trade makes all the sense in the world. From a PR standpoint, it’s a little harder to defend after the Jags traded Ramsey and fellow first-round pick Dante Fowler in consecutive seasons. With a trade of Yannick Ngakoue likely to happen over the next month or two, Jacksonville will have said goodbye to a lot of defensive talent. This team also lost WR Allen Robinson to free agency two seasons ago and its defensive leader, LB Telvin Smith, stepped away from the team last offseason. What I’m saying is, it’s going to be hard to put together ads for 2020 season tickets. Gardner Minshew’s mustache isn’t that much of a draw.
But even if the fans hate this trade, it was still the right one to make.
Jaguars grade: B+
I’m not so crazy about this one from the Broncos’ perspective. Yes, Bouye might still be a good player at one of the more important positions on the roster, but giving up a fourth-round pick for a player who would have been available anyway is a reckless use of resources.
While a trade does ensure that Denver gets their guy and doesn’t have to outbid other teams for his services, they’re going to be paying him about $27 million over the next few seasons, which will make Bouye one of the ten highest-paid players at his position. He wasn’t getting that from another team, so if the Broncos are comfortable paying that price and offered it to him after he had been cut, Bouye would have been theirs anyway … and they could have saved the fourth-round pick.
Again, Bouye is a solid corner — he might even be a very good one — but Broncos head coach Vic Fangio has made a career out of getting more out of less at the cornerback position. His scheme doesn’t put a lot of physical stress on its cornerbacks, who are rarely left out on an island. If you can play the flats, jump out routes by slot receivers and stay over the top of go routes, you can thrive as a corner in Fangio’s scheme. Bouye can do all of those things, but so can a lot of veteran corners who don’t come with a $13.5 million cap hit.
It’s always a good thing to add talent, especially at a position of need, but in a league with a hard salary cap, resource allocation always matters and this was not the smartest use of draft capital or cap dollars by Elway.
Broncos grade: C-
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