John Idzik Here to Help Jags Spend Money
By Luke Sims
John Idzik, the recently fired general manager of the New York Jets, was recently brought on as a consultant for the Jacksonville Jaguars to help figure out just how to spend their massive amounts of money heading into the 2015 NFL Free Agency period and 2015 NFL Draft.
Let’s be clear here, Idzik is not going to be making personnel decisions (yes, you can breath a sigh of relief). He will, however, be involved in negotiating and considering contract offers. As noted by Darryl Slater of NJ.com, that could be a good thing as Idzik spent much of his time in New York conservatively spending to set up a strong base of players and open things up in the future for the Jets. While it’s nice to think of the Jaguars as players for every high priced free agent this offseason, the truth is there are a lot of holes for the team to fill and bringing in Idzik to help ensure the team can afford to hire a lot of talent will be key.
Overall, the move to bring in Idzik is wise. He was setting the Jets up for a similar situation as Jags GM Dave Caldwell has now and will be able to jump right in and help the Jags make moves that Caldwell dictates. As stated before, Idzik will not be doing the personnel decisions. Here’s what Caldwell had to say, per the Florida Times-Union:
"[Idzik] spent the last two years in a very similar situation we were in and probably spent the last year or so forecasting the kind of salary cap space that we have.[Salary cap chief] Tim Walsh is great, but with the amount of cap room we have moving forward and if we do some deals in free agency, I thought we needed the extra help because Tim’s the only guy in our department."
When you’ve got one guy working with $60+ million in cap space he certainly needs some help! Idzik should be able to step in immediately and be of benefit for the Jaguars. I’m excited to have him on as a consultant and is another example of the Jaguars being able to bring in talented (though maybe not as a GM) executives and football minds to the team to help the Jags get better.