Turf Show Times
If the Jaguars are open to trading Brian Thomas Jr., as has been alleged on Saturday, then the Los Angeles Rams are the usual suspects to make an offer that Jacksonville couldn’t refuse. The Rams need a player like Thomas to take the pressure off of Puka Nacua and Davante Adams, and they have often like trios of star receivers during Sean McVay’s tenure as the head coach.
Should the Rams trade one of their two first round picks for Thomas? That’s mostly a matter of how good you think Thomas is, not how much you think that receiver is a need for L.A.. You may be surprised by how underwhelming Thomas is this season, but is that mostly Trevor Lawrence’s fault?
Believe what you want about the Jacksonville Jaguars, they are not a good football team despite a 4-3 record. I can’t say that they didn’t beat the Chiefs and 49ers, both quality wins, but losing their last two by a combined score of 55-19 is indicative of offensive problems that were bound to bite them.
The Jaguars rank 22nd in scoring, 26th in net yards per pass attempt, 29th in third down percentage, and 21st in the red zone. Jacksonville’s season high for passing yards is just 264, which they did last Sunday against the Rams in London and only because the Jaguars trailed by so many points. Thomas may be better than his numbers indicate, I just want to point out that his numbers are really bad for a WR1:
His Week 1 game against the Panthers went as poorly as it could have gone, catching one pass for 11 yards on seven targets. The next week wasn’t much better, gaining 49 yards on 12 targets. Then next week, Thomas only caught two of six targets.
That is an appalling catch rate of 28% through the first three games.
Though the numbers have picked up since then — 20 of 30, 250 yards, 1 TD, 66% catch rate, 8.3 yards per target — they are far from what Thomas was doing as a rookie first round pick out of LSU. Thomas had over 1,200 yards as a rookie and in his last six games of 2024, he had 50 catches for 675 yards and 5 touchdowns. Thomas actually played more snaps with Mac Jones than he did with Lawrence and clearly there’s a chemistry issue between the quarterback and receiver.
That could just be because Lawrence is one of the most overrated players in the NFL.
Even so, the Jaguars are prone to making personnel mistakes and they might be open to trading Thomas if he isn’t meshing well with Lawrence and head coach Liam Coen. I don’t really believe rumors spread by Dianna Russini, however even absent that report, I think Jacksonville would be open to trading Thomas because the Jaguars are about to fall apart and there’s an apparent chemistry issue at play. The Jags also don’t have a first round pick in 2026 because...
