Maurice Jones-Drew finally has spoken. Sort of.
After weeks of silence (other than praising the Madden demo via Twitter), Jones-Drew took part in a DirecTV promotional call on Wednesday. On the topic of his four-week-old holdout, Jones-Drew said that “things are going to work out and everything’s going to be good,” via CBSSports.com.
It’s encouraging. We think.
Really, what does he mean? Will things work out in Jacksonville, where Jones-Drew has stayed away because he wants a new contract and where owner Shahid Khan has said there will be no new contract? Or will Jones-Drew be traded and paid in the process?
Unless the Jags are willing to trade Jones-Drew and unless there’s a team that is willing to give the Jags what they want and Jones-Drew what he wants, the only way this “works out and everything’s going to be good” from Jones-Drew’s perspective is if Khan doing something other than what he already has said he won’t do: Give Maurice more money.
And while it’s unclear whether anyone has made a specific offer to the Jags for the 2011 NFL rushing champion, Manish Mehta of the New York Daily News reports that the Jets aren’t interested because the total price is too high. This doesn’t mean the Jets have inquired; it only means that they know enough to know that the opportunity is too rich for their liking.
Until a team is willing and able to cough up the picks and players and pennies (a whole lot of pennies) to get the deal done, Jones-Drew’s rights will remain with the Jaguars. And this presumes that the Jags would even part ways with him. (They haven’t said “hell no,” which could mean that under the right circumstances they’ll say, “hell yes.”)
Unless Jones-Drew knows something the rest of us don’t, chances are he was expressing optimism externally despite privately knowing that he still doesn’t know how these dominoes will fall.