The details have emerged on the Jacksonville Jaguars’ latest trade.
According to NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero, the Jaguars have traded center Luke Fortner to the New Orleans Saints in exchange for defensive tackle Khalen Saunders.
Smart Move
The move to add Saunders will not cost the Jaguars and general manager James Gladstone any draft picks, while also answering a serious question about their defensive line depth.
While Saunders is not a superstar who will fill the stat sheet, he does give the Jaguars an experienced veteran option to throw into the mix in a shallow defensive tackle room.
“Originally selected by the Kansas City Chiefs in the third round of the 2019 NFL Draft out of Western Illinois, Saunders enters his seventh NFL season and third campaign with New Orleans,” Saunders’ Saints bio reads.
“Signed as an unrestricted free agent in the 2023 offseason, Saunders combined with two other newcomers in Shepherd and Bresee that season to form a new interior front, recording career-highs in total tackles (57) and solo stops (24). In 58 career regular season games with 23 starts, Saunders has recorded 148 tackles (68 solo), 4.5 sacks, one interception, four pass breakups and four stops for loss.”
As for Fortner, it was always a longshot for him to make the roster. A third-round pick in the 2022 NFL Draft, Fortner started the first 34 games of his career before being relegated to a backup duty behind Mitch Morse last season.
This offseason, the Jaguars signed former Tampa Bay Buccaneers center Robert Hainsey to start in the middle of the offensive line. They also drafted Jonah Monheim out of USC in the seventh round, and he has leapt Fortner on the depth chart in practice in recent weeks.
Monheim now looks to be a top backup on a Jaguars’ offensive line that is still sorting out all of the pieces.
“I think it’s just giving people opportunities to see what they can do with each group and also filling in and making sure that we’re able to finish the scrimmage, and it’s not a mess. So, I thought that Fred [OL Fred Johnson] and Wyatt [OL Wyatt Milum] specifically, Mekari [OL Patrick Mekari] bounced around, but they all had moments, and they’ve all been able to do some positive things,” Jaguars head coach Liam Coen said this week.
“We have to remain, the consistency of that, whether it’s a swing tackle or whomever it is, consistency is, as you guys know, the key. It’s one thing to have splash plays or you dump somebody but then we, have an MA [missed alignment] in the next play like that’s too much of a roller coaster for offensive line play at times. So, I was pleased with the guys being able to step up and take extra reps especially when those two guys went down.”
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