Toothless: after salary cap problems forced them to strip their talent base, the Jaguars are the latest team to be left

Football Digest, Oct, 2002 by Vito Stellino

IF THERE IS ONE LESSON TO BE learned in this era of the salary cap, it's that teams eventually have to pay the piper.

The system allows franchises to spend more than the cap allows by paying players big signing bonuses and spreading that money out over the length of the contract. That means a $5 million signing bonus in a five-year contract counts only $1 million against the cap the first year.

Eventually, though, the bill comes due. It's like credit card debt.

The Dallas Cowboys and San Francisco 49ers learned that lesson the hard way in recent years. Now the Jacksonville Jaguars are living through a salary cap nightmare of their own.

At least the spending sprees of the Cowboys and the 49ers produced Super Bowl rifles. Not so for the Jacksonville. While the Jaguars became the most successful expansion team in NFL history after entering the league in 1995--going to the AFC rifle game twice in their first five seasons--they never reached the Super Bowl. And in the aftermath of their failed Super Bowl runs, they have been forced to, break up their team to stay under the salary cap. Now they're learning to live on a budget.

The Jaguars had no choice but to place three starters (offensive tackle Tony Boselli and defensive tackles Seth Payne and Gary Walker) on the expansion list for the Houston Texans. They also were forced to void the contracts of two more starters (linebacker Kevin Hardy and defensive end Renaldo Wynn), cut three more starters (linebacker Hardy Nickerson, wide receiver Keenan McCardell, and cornerback Aaron Beasley), and not bid for their free-agent kicker, Mike Hollis.

All of those players were key to what Jacksonville accomplished over the years, and they had no problem finding new jobs. Hardy landed on the Cowboys, Wynn the Washington Redskins, Nickerson the Green Bay Packers, McCardell the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Beasley the New York Jets, and Hollis the Buffalo Bills.

The most traumatic decision Jacksonville faced was leaving Boselli exposed for the expansion draft. As the first player ever selected by the Jaguars, Boselli was the cornerstone of the franchise, on and off the field. Not only was he a perennial Pro Bowler, but he also was a fan favorite.

For the Jaguars, the expansion draft served as a get-out-of-salary-cap-jail-free card. The salaries of players taken in the expansion draft are wiped from the books of the teams that lose them. By allowing Houston to select Boselli, Payne, and Walker, the Jaguars erased $17 million from their payroll. But that was the only positive to come out of it, especially concerning Boselli. The Jaguars had hoped he'd spend his entire career in Jacksonville, but they felt they had to let him go for the long-term good of the franchise.

"It was the most distasteful decision I've ever had to make with this franchise," Jaguars owner Wayne Weaver says. "Obviously, the last player I'd want to put [on the expansion list] is Tony Boselli. But he gave us the best chance of trying to solve the salary cap problem."

Cutting McCardell was another difficult move. He and Jimmy Smith formed one of the best pass-catching tandems of all time. Last season alone, they combined for 205 catches, the second-highest total by a duo in NFL history. Only the Detroit Lions' Herman Moore and Brett Perriman surpassed it, with 231 in 1995. McCardell and Smith each also had 100 receiving yards in the same game nine times in their career together, an NFL, record. But the Jaguars no longer could afford to keep both players on their roster, and McCardell was the odd man out.

Despite what has happened to the team, Weaver says he has no regrets about the spending binge that brought him to this point. He calls the bid to win the Super Bowl a "powerful intoxicant." After the team went 14-2 in 1999 and reached the AFC title game, he said he wanted to keep the team together to make one more Super Bowl run. But things didn't work out, as the Jaguars slipped to 7-9 in 2000. Weaver concedes that he should have started making changes after that season.

Instead, the Jaguars restructured enough contracts to keep the core of the team together for one more season. But Jacksonville had very little depth, so it suffered greatly when it was hit by a rash of injuries. (The Jaguars led the league in injuries to starters the past two seasons.) The result was a 6-10 record, the team's worst since its inaugural season when it went 4-12.

Jacksonville's salary cap woes actually were years in the making. They can be traced back all the way to the team's second season in 1996, when it lured right tackle Leon Searcy away from the Pittsburgh Steelers with a lucrative deal. If the Jaguars hadn't signed Searcy, they could have drafted offensive tackle Jonathan Ogden with the second pick in that draft and paired him with Boselli. But once they signed Searcy, they didn't need Ogden and drafted Kevin Hardy. Now Boselli, Searcy, and Hardy all are gone, and Ogden is a perennial Pro Bowler with the team that wound up drafting him, the Baltimore Ravens.