If Allen Robinson remains in Jacksonville Adidas Bo Horvat Jersey , it won’t be as one of the highest-paid receivers in the league.
The Jaguars declined to use the franchise or transition tag on Robinson, stirring questions about his future. NFL teams had until Tuesday afternoon to tag pending free agents, but Jacksonville executives told Robinson long before the deadline he would not be tagged.
Had the Jags tagged Robinson, he could have signed a one-year, $15.982 million contract for 2018. Not doing so indicates how top executive Tom Coughlin and general manager Dave Caldwell feel about Robinson; they don’t believe he is worth that much money six months after reconstructive knee surgery.
Pittsburgh’s Antonio Brown ($16.775M) is scheduled to make the most of any receiver in 2018.
Jacksonville and Robinson still have a week to reach a contract agreement; the team has exclusive negotiating rights with him until March 12. If no deal is reached by then, Robinson would become an unrestricted free agent on March 14.
”I don’t really know what is going to happen,” Robinson recently said. ”I know there are a lot of different scenarios. Right now, my main focus is to kind of let my agent narrow it down and for me to get back at 100 percent. That’s the main focus right now for me. I know I’ll be back at 100 percent.
”I know all that is going to play out. I know the player that I am. I know that the plays that I made. I know the plays I’m going to continue to make.”
Robinson had the best training camp of his career in 2017 and looked like he would be an integral part of the offense. But the 2015 Pro Bowl selection tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee on Jacksonville’s third play of last season and had surgery the following week.
Robinson is how running again and closing in on a full recovery.
”He is right on schedule,” coach Doug Marrone said last week at the NFL scouting combine. ”He is there every day; I see him quite a bit. I know that he has worked hard. We have all seen his work on the field and how hard he works on the field. I think what you can’t see is that he is working twice as hard in the recovery process and the rehabilitation.”
Still, Robinson has missed 21 games in four seasons and wasn’t a speedster to begin with. So how effective will he be coming off a major knee injury?
”There are a lot of things we like about him, but we just have to make sure it is the right thing for the team,” Caldwell said at the combine.
A second-round draft pick from Penn State, Robinson has 202 catches for 2,848 yards and 22 touchdowns in 43 games. He had 80 receptions for 1,400 yards and 14 touchdowns in 2015, establishing himself as one of the best receivers in franchise history.
But he caught 73 passes for 883 yards and six scores in 2016, causing some to wonder if his Pro Bowl season was a fluke.
If the Jaguars do move on from Robinson Adidas James Neal Jersey , they would have a huge hole to fill at the position. Marqise Lee also is a pending free agent, and the team likely will either part ways with receiver Allen Hurns or re-negotiate his contract that includes a base salary of $7 million in 2018.
”Nothing has been decided on that yet,” Caldwell said. ”We will look at that.”
Robinson has said repeatedly he wants to stay in Jacksonville, especially since he played a cheerleading role during the team’s breakthrough year and believes the Jags are poised to make another Super Bowl run in the near future.
”This is where I’ve been the last four years and this is something that we’ve all really put in and tried to build,” he said. ”It wasn’t something that we just came into and it happened. We went from 3-13, to 5-11, 3-13 to now. It’s just one of those things that, again, I stepped in here Day 1. It was a lot different than it is now.”
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Andrew Heaney was a member of the Los Angeles Dodgers for a few hours early in his major league career.
Heaney is still hoping to convince their front office they should have given him a longer look five years ago. He’ll get another opportunity Sunday evening when he takes the mound for the Los Angeles Angels in the series finale against the Dodgers at Angel Stadium.
The Dodgers (48-40) gave up two runs in the ninth inning and lost the series opener 3-2 on Friday night, then held on for a 3-1 win against the Angels (45-45) on Saturday.
Heaney was traded from the Miami Marlins to the Dodgers at the winter meetings Dec. 12, 2014, but a few hours later the Dodgers dealt him to the Angels for popular second baseman Howie Kendrick.
Heaney had two chances to beat the Dodgers during the 2015 season, but lost both games. He gave up two runs and four hits in 5 1/3 innings of a 3-1 loss at Dodger Stadium on Aug. 1 of that season. Five weeks later at Angel Stadium, he gave up five runs and six hits in five innings of a 6-4 loss.
Heaney had Tommy John surgery in June 2016 and made only six starts over the next two seasons.
Heaney (4-6, 3.94) had a solid month of May this season, posting a 2-3 record and 2.41 ERA in six starts. He had a winning mark of 2-1 in June, but his ERA dipped to 4.45 for the month. In his only start in July Adidas Marc-Andre Fleury Jersey , he gave up three runs and five hits in seven innings at the Seattle Mariners on Tuesday, taking the loss in the 4-1 defeat.
“It’s sort of been the same old story for a little while, just sort of the big innings where I let it kind of build,” Heaney told reporters after his latest outing. “It’s something where I need to come out and establish earlier, kind of get ahead, and all the other same stuff we always talk about.”
Heaney will be opposed by Dodgers left-hander Alex Wood, who will be aiming to win his fifth straight start. Wood also won all five appearances in May of last season on his way to an 11-0 start.
Wood (5-5, 3.84) probably didn’t expect to have a chance to go over .500 by early July after dropping to 0-4 on May 15.
“Winning is just nice,” Wood told Sportsnet after his latest start, a 17-1 win against the visiting Pittsburgh Pirates on Monday. “Four in a row is nice, especially where I was after that three-start stretch. So I feel good, just trying to keep moving forward and looking towards the future. Hopefully, we’ll keep swinging the bats well and play well going into the All-Star break.”
The Angels are the only American League West team Wood has not faced in his major league career.
He struggled in his only interleague start this season, giving up seven runs and seven hits over 3 2/3 innings in a 16-6 loss to the visiting Oakland A’s on April 11.