As the Jaguars try to exorcise the demons of past drafts gone bad, it makes sense to get rid of the most visible reminder of the team’s prior ineptitude.
A third-round pick in 2012, punter Anger became a Jaguar despite the presence of the following players in the draft pool: Olivier Vernon, Russell Wilson, Mohamed Sanu, Nick Foles, T.Y. Hilton, Lamar Miller, Travis Benjamin, Kirk Cousins, Jaye Howard, Malik Jackson, Josh Norman, Marvin Jones, Alfred Morris, and Danny Trevathan.
Anger, now a free agent, likely won’t be back with the Jaguars. On the first day of free agency, they signed Brad Nortman.
It’s a four-year, $8.8 million deal, with $1.65 million fully guaranteed. The deal includes a fourth-year option that must be exercised before the first day of the 2019 league year, at $2.25 million.
Nortman, a sixth-round pick who spent four seasons with the Panthers, gets a middle-of-the-pack deal which reflects the basic reality that, as one league source recently explained it, there are three great punters in the NFL, three bad punters in the NFL, and the rest are interchangeable.