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December 19, 2025 12 mins
Jakobi Meyers Signs $60M Contract Extension with Jaguars
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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to the deep dive. This is where we
take you know, that whole stack of sources, all the
articles and research, and we really just try to boil
it all down to what you actually need to know.
And today we are we're strapping on the helmets, We're
diving deep into the NFL.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Yeah, this is a really interesting one.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
It is specifically, we're talking about a massive and I
mean highly unusual contract extension.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Right in the middle of the season, exactly.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
For a player who'd only been with his new team
for what a matter of weeks. We're talking about Jacobe Myers.
So the headlines were pretty straightforward. You know, the Jaguars
locked up Myers with this staggering deal. But we're not
here for the sticker price. Our job is to go
beyond that sixty million dollar figure and really understand the
strategic justification, like what raw data shifted so dramatically, so

(00:51):
quickly that this team felt they had to make such
a massive, immediate investment.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
And that's absolutely the core of the story here. I mean,
this isn't some traditional contract negotiation that happened over an offseason.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
Not at all.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
No, this was like an emergency organizational maneuver, and it
validates two things. Okay, First that the trade they made
back in November was just a stroke of genius, and
second that the Jaguars were missing a single, specific, and
honestly an unglamorous trade which was utter reliability, and they
were willing to pay a massive premium for it. They

(01:23):
basically bought a cure for a crippling problem.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
Cure. I like that. Okay, So let's unpack this commitment
because the timing and the dollar amount are well, they're
frankly stunning.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
Jacoby Myers agreed to a three year, sixty million dollar
extension sixty million, yeah, which locks him into Jacksonville all
the way through the twenty twenty eight season.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
And if you look under the hood at that deal,
you know, at the financial structure, the level of belief
is even more striking. How So, of that sixty million total,
a massive forty million of it is guaranteed.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
Forty million guaranteed.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
Wow. Yeah, And you just do not commit forty million guaranteed,
especially mid season, unless you are absolutely certain that player
has fundamentally altered the you know, the trajectory of your franchise.

Speaker 1 (02:08):
So this wasn't a tentative investment.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
No, not at all. This was an act of supreme
organizational confidence.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
And when you put it in that context, the financial
leap he made is just immense.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
Oh it's huge.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
I mean, Myers had signed with the Raiders in twenty
twenty three for a three year, thirty three million dollar.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
Contract, right, thirty three million, So in less.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
Than a year, this new deal with Jacksonville, it nearly
doubles his annual value.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
And we have to remember how he even got there
in the first place, right the trade. He was acquired
right at the November fourth trade deadline from the Raiders
for what everyone, and I mean everyone considered a bargain
basement price.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
Which was a twenty twenty six fourth and a sixth
round pick.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
Just a couple of future lottery tickets.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
Basically, that's the key tension, isn't it. They got him
for dirt cheap, a couple of mid round picks a
few year out. But the risk was huge because he
was set to become a free agent after this season, right,
so they essentially traded two future picks for what could
have been just a two month rental.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
Precisely, they took a cheap shot on a rental, and
the returns were so immediate and so valuable that they
realized they couldn't afford the risk of letting him test
the open market.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
Ah, So they saw what was coming.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
They knew that if he kept playing like this, they'd
be fighting what a half dozen other teams in a
bidding war this spring. So they decided to pay the
market price now to hold on to the magic they
had just stumbled upon.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
That's fascinating, So they paid top dollar to avoid a
bidding war. They pre empted the market because the internal
results were just that overwhelming exactly. Okay, So that brings
us to the crucial part of this deep dive. We've
established the cost sixty million, But what happened on the field,
What happened in the metrics to make that price tag

(03:54):
field cheap?

Speaker 2 (03:55):
This is where the story shifts from you know, finance
to performance.

Speaker 1 (03:59):
Let's pivot from the ledger to the numbers.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
And we have a crystal clear six games sample size
to analyze the difference between the Jaguars offense before Myers
and the Jaguars offense after Myers.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
Okay, let's start with what Myers did individually in those
six games with Jacksonville. He put up solid numbers, but
honestly not world beating numbers, and then not at all.
Twenty seven catches, three hundred and fifty five yards and
three touchdowns. If you just look at that, you wouldn't
typically justify doubling a guy's salary.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
And that's exactly why we have to look beyond the
individual stat line and focus on his role as an
organizational catalyst.

Speaker 1 (04:35):
Okay, so paint the picture before the trade.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
Before the trade, in the first eight games of the season,
the Jaguars were let's just say, a struggling offense.

Speaker 1 (04:45):
That's putting it lightly.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
They were averaging a lackluster twenty point four points.

Speaker 1 (04:49):
Per game, which ranked them what twenty third in the
entire NFL.

Speaker 2 (04:52):
Twenty third, and their franchise quarterback Trevor Lawrence was having
a pretty average year nine touchdown passes versus six in
our seven. The offense is just sputtering, stalling out.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
And then the seismic shift happens after the trade. In
those six games with Myers on the team.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
Well, first, the team record immediately jumps to five and one, and.

Speaker 1 (05:12):
Their average points per game just rockets up to an
astronomical thirty one point eight points.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
That jump that right there is the single most important
number in this entire contract justification, and the eleven point
four points per game improvement.

Speaker 1 (05:28):
That number eleven point four It can feel a little academic,
but in the NFL, what does an eleven point swing
truly mean for a team ceiling?

Speaker 2 (05:37):
I mean it means everything. It's the whole ballgame. A
team averaging twenty points per game is fundamentally a losing team.
You're probably looking at a top ten draft pick, okay,
But a team averaging almost thirty two points per game
like the Jags were post Myers, now you're firmly in
Super Bowl contention territory.

Speaker 1 (05:53):
So he didn't just boost the offense.

Speaker 2 (05:55):
He completely redefined their identity as a unit. Is the
difference between failure year and being elite?

Speaker 1 (06:01):
And what about for Trevor Lawrence?

Speaker 2 (06:03):
The change in Lawrence is just as dramatic. In those
six games, he threw fourteen touchdown passes and only five interceptions.

Speaker 1 (06:09):
And wasn't there a catch with those picks?

Speaker 2 (06:11):
There was? Three of those five picks came in a
single kind of outlier game, which means his consistency outside
of that one afternoon was just outstanding.

Speaker 1 (06:20):
So Meyers was the catalyst that unlocked the franchise quarterback.

Speaker 2 (06:23):
He was the essential catalyst.

Speaker 1 (06:25):
Yes, so the data is overwhelming. You had one player
who wasn't even putting up monster individual numbers and it
triggers this massive, winning offensive surge. But the question is
still why him? Lots of players can catch a ball.
We said his yardage wasn't spectacular. Why did Jacoby Meyer
specifically become the sixty million dollar answer?

Speaker 2 (06:46):
To answer that, you had to look deeper at what
was fundamentally breaking this team. Okay, so that gets us
into the why him face, and it brings us back
to the team's pain. When the Jaguars made that trade,
they were dealing with a really sick, magnificant injury crisis
at wide receiver.

Speaker 1 (07:02):
I remember this, Travis Hunter was lost for the season, right.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
Brian Thomas Junior was battling shoulder and ankle issues. Dianmie
Brown had a shoulder injury.

Speaker 1 (07:09):
They needed bodies.

Speaker 2 (07:10):
They need a reliable body, yes, but they desperately needed
a specific type of reliable.

Speaker 1 (07:15):
Body, and that desperation that ties directly back to their
most destructive weakness.

Speaker 2 (07:19):
The whole story at the time of the trade, the
Jacksonville Jaguars led the entire NFL in drops with nineteen drops.
They were literally leading the league in fumbles caused by
their own receivers.

Speaker 1 (07:31):
Nineteen drops is not just a stat that's organizational pain.

Speaker 2 (07:35):
Oh, it's brutal drops at that volume their drive killers,
They crush momentum, They breed distrust between a quarterback and his.

Speaker 1 (07:43):
Targets, and they turn wins into.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
Losses, agonizing losses. And the worst part was that their
young high draft pick receiver Thomas Junior, had five of
those costly drops himself. The team was just demoralized by it.

Speaker 1 (07:55):
And here is where Myers's value just transcends every other metric.

Speaker 2 (07:59):
This is it.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
This is his defining trade, his sure handedness. At the
time they got him, Myers had only recorded eleven drops
in his entire seven year career.

Speaker 2 (08:09):
Think about that. Hundreds and hundreds of targets over all
those seasons, just eleven drops.

Speaker 1 (08:14):
His consistency is almost unbelievable.

Speaker 2 (08:16):
It is the most drops he has ever had in
any single season is just two, just two, And this
season he has only recorded one single drop.

Speaker 1 (08:24):
So the Jaguars looked at their problem nineteen drops leading
the NFL, and then they looked at Myers with one
drop all.

Speaker 2 (08:31):
Year, and they saw a literal cure. He is the
ultimate safety net.

Speaker 1 (08:35):
And you know that level of reliability. It really explains
the specific language we started hearing from the Jaguars front office.

Speaker 2 (08:41):
Oh. Absolutely, you could tell they weren't just happy, they
were like relieved.

Speaker 1 (08:45):
We have to get to this quote from the GM
James Gladstone the day after the trade. He called Myers
sure handedness, his his superpower, his superpower. I mean, that
one word says it all. They weren't just getting a receiver, No,
they were acquiring a g guaranteed fix to their single
biggest statistical weakness. They paid sixty million dollars to address

(09:07):
their achilles heel with a superpower.

Speaker 2 (09:09):
And that, I mean, that justifies the entire price tag
right there. They weren't paying for explosive, deep threat potential.
They were paying for a highly functional, consistent short to
intermediate target who just keeps the offense on schedule and
converts third downs.

Speaker 1 (09:26):
They were paying to remove the biggest obstacle to their
franchise quarterback success.

Speaker 2 (09:31):
The simple fear that the ball was going to hit
the turf. They paid to eliminate that fear.

Speaker 1 (09:36):
And when you look at his career context, this isn't
a flash in the pan.

Speaker 2 (09:40):
No, this is sustained consistency, built from the ground up.

Speaker 1 (09:42):
Which is what gave them the confidence for the long
term investment.

Speaker 2 (09:45):
Absolutely. I mean, he started his career in twenty nineteen
as an undrafted rookie free agent with the Patriots. No hype,
no hype, no massive draft capital, just years of grinding consistency.
In four years there he put up huge volume two
hundred th thirty five catches over twenty seven hundred yards.

Speaker 1 (10:02):
Well then he maintained that with the Raiders exactly.

Speaker 2 (10:04):
But the Raiders one hundred and hunety one catches over
twenty one hundred yards, twelve touchdowns. This isn't some late
blooming star. This is a high volume, highly reliable target
who has proven is worth across multiple systems.

Speaker 1 (10:17):
And his total career stat line is what over four
hundred and fifty catches and five thousand yards. Now and
age wise, that investment makes perfect sense. He turned twenty
nine in early November, meaning this sixty million dollar contract
covers what should be the rest of his prime athletic years.

Speaker 2 (10:32):
The Jaguars are banking on four more years of problem
solving reliability. The connection point here is just undeniable. The
data shows that reliability, especially in the system desperate for consistency,
can command a premium price and immediately shift to team's
entire success metrics. It's a masterclass in roster construction.

Speaker 1 (10:51):
Identify the whole, find the perfect specialized.

Speaker 2 (10:55):
Solution, and pay whatever it takes to secure it. They
didn't pay for potential. They paydid for a proven problem
solver who instantly unlocked the potential of everyone around him.

Speaker 1 (11:05):
So that brings us to the end of our deep dive.
The essential takeaway for you here is clear. Yeah, that
sixty million dollars it wasn't paid for flash or explosive
speed or highlight reel catches. It was a measured, strategic
investment based on a desperate organization wide need for statistical consistency.

Speaker 2 (11:24):
And a proven ability to elevate the quarterback exactly.

Speaker 1 (11:27):
The trade for Myers immediately cured the Jaguars league leading
drop problem and triggered that massive eleven point four points
per game offensive searche.

Speaker 2 (11:36):
And what's truly fascinating to me is the speed with
which that data translated into massive organizational confidence Myers was
going to be a free agent, which means the team
saw that invaluable immediate return, that eleven point four points
per game, and they essentially.

Speaker 1 (11:51):
Panicked, panicked into paying him, panicked.

Speaker 2 (11:53):
In a good way. They realized they couldn't afford to
risk losing him. They chose to lock down that reliability immediately,
regardless of the price, because the cost of not having
him was watching their season derail.

Speaker 1 (12:06):
So as you look at that sixty million dollars price tag,
the one that locks him in through twenty twenty eight,
we'll kind of leave you with this to think about.
Is the true value of that contract. Is it more
in the fourteen touchdown passes Trevor Lawrence through after the trade,
or is it simply in the fact that Jacobe Myers
just stopped the ball from hitting the ground. Something to
mull over as you watch how this investment in pure

(12:28):
reliability plays out. We'll see you next time on the
Deep Dive.
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