Tom Coughlin is like a poker player who pushes all his chips on the table in hopes of drawing an inside straight.
The decision by Coughlin, who is now running the Jacksonville Jaguars organization, to trade a conditional seventh-round pick to Cleveland for backup quarterback Cody Kessler is another example that he is all in on the running game and thinks he can win with Blake Bortles at quarterback.
Kessler makes sense as a backup because he’ll cost the Jaguars less than a $1 million in salary in his third year, and Bortles is so durable that Kessler is not likely to see much action.
But it also means the Jaguars don’t figure to draft a quarterback in the first three rounds or address the problem of finding a quarterback for the future in Coughlin’s first two years.
Kessler certainly isn’t a long-term answer. He was drafted in the third round two years ago, but his stock has dropped since then. No team was willing to offer the Browns an unconditional seventh, much less a sixth, for Kessler.
Continue reading “Coughlin rolling the dice by doubling down on the Jaguars’ run game”