There's only so much a team and a league can do to keep a player from making a stupid decision.Blitz wrote: ↑Wed Aug 30, 2023 10:33 amIt looks like Rourke is signing to be on the Jaguars practice roster. Rourke could have signed to be on the practice roster of any NFL team who wanted him for that role.
Rourke thought he had a chance to challenge for the backup quarterback position in Jacksonville. But that was not the case. Beathard was slated in as the backup to begin training camp and that is where he was going to land when training camp was all over, no matter how well Rourke played.
There are a lot of aspects to decisions made in the NFL that are underneath the surface of things. Rourke will likely kick around down south hoping for a chance that may arrive but the odds are they never will.
I hoped for the best for Rourke down south and still do but the best odds are that he will return to the CFL one day and my hope is that team will be our Leos, who will still retain his rights.
There was no purpose served by signing in Jacksonville. The writing was on the wall when they resigned Bethard to a multi-year deal and Burris wasn't invited to continue to be part of the coaching staff. Both of those things happened long before camp even opened.
The player is not served by taking a practice roster spot. He doesn't earn service time toward an NFL pension and there's a zero percent chance he gets any playing time in Jacksonville. Whatever agent he does have is doing him a disservice by keeping him in Jacksonville.
This was predictable. The league and the player had the opportunity to adequately compensate and market the best Canadian QB to come along since Russ Jackson, to an immense benefit to the player, the league and Canadian football in general. Since neither were willing to step forward, what we have is yet another Canadian player who will be judged as "not being good enough" for the NFL and the opportunity is gone. Whether it changes the Lions fortunes for the 2023 season or not is immiterial (it doesn't, and I don't blame the club, who has done nothing but manage this extremely well from a PR perspective). I hope that was worth $1 million to the player and the league.
Of course, in a league with a clown for a Commissioner, and a documented 40 year 90%+ failure rate of CFL QBs in the NFL this result is and was inevitable.
"But Cro, he didn't do that bad."
I know. But all you need to know is that despite doing well, he went through waivers unclaimed. That includes an Arizona team with a roster full of truck drivers, a New England team with one QB, and a Bears team with a guy off the street as a backup. All of them would rather have "their guy" in house than someone with demonstrable quality tape and a dozen professional starts. It's as much the system being broken as the player being obtuse.