24 hours ago, news was breaking that Maurice Jones-Drew would be open to being traded. Now it seems Jones-Drew and his camp are backing off his previous position, at least to some extent.
Earlier this morning, NFL Network's Steve Wyche said that Jones-Drew is open to repairing his relationship with the Jaguars and owner Shahid Khan, saying,
After speaking to his agent,Adisa Bakari, he’s also open to bridging what is becoming a more fractured relationship because of the comments of Khan, not only Tuesday, but late last week,” said Wyche. “The issue is who is going to extend the olive branch if there is going to be a reparation, because Jones-Drew, he is further entrenched in his holdout — he does not like the situation, the fact that Khan is discussing publicly what was supposed to be handled in private.
It's not surprising that Jones-Drew backed off yesterday's declaration to an extent. There was an enormous amount of backlash from Jaguars fans, and the move was even called "laughable" by ESPN's Paul Kuharsky.
It's hard to imagine the Jaguars being able to find a trading partner to deal Jones-Drew to. Any team trading for the runner would be forced to renegotiate a contract after acquiring him, driving his potential trade value down in a big way.
The Jaguars are far more likely to maintain their current position, especially considering the negative press Jones-Drew's been getting over the past couple of days. Eventually, Jones-Drew will have to report to the team to prevent himself from losing a year. In the meantime, we get plenty of fun-filled sound bytes and reports to fill the void.
