[MIJB#19]

General Manager Notes: Jackson out, Fletcher in
And some other riffraff that won't make it into pre-season.

Clayton Jackson was the most prominent post training camp roster cut casualty. In our group of 9 linebackers, he certainly wasn't the worst of the bunch, but unlike the likes of Jose Meadows, Brant Rayburn, Andrew Cochrane and Brandon Brady, he wasn't much of a special teamer. Third round pick for us in the 2087 draft, we made him sit out his rookie campaign. But convinced in his pass defense skills and slightly less in his pass rush skills, we wanted to keep him around for season 2 and onwards. Jackson ended up playing in 160 regular season games and 4 more in the playoffs, never missing a game since week 1 of the 2088 season. Last season he was a bit of a liability in our pass defense and with the looks of undrafted rookie Trey Ford, it wasn't to be for another season. That's the third long timer already to not make our pre-season roster after Daquan Espino and Branden Sandlin...

Also missing out are Kelvin Everett, the third-year quarterback, our seventh round pick Bill Benson (also a quarterback and despite his somewhat promising training camp), undrafted rookies tight end R.J. Asmus and safety Dakota Kamin, and veteran long snapper Sebastian Garner.

Reporting for duty is defensive tackle Darien Fletcher. He ended his hold out after we finally agreed to terms, on a two-year deal. It will make re-signing cornerback Ernie Grant a bigger challenge now, as well as the extension of contracts of several of our second and third tier players. We've got less than $7M to work with now. We'll likely get around the table with running back Bert Ta'Amu and defensive tackle Jerome Shumate to find some additional cap relief, while the change of kicker might also happen and open up some cap space. We have 21 players on roster in their final year of contract. But all of that is tomorrow's story...