The Jaguars are signing free agent defensive end Rasheem Green to a one-year deal, Adam Schefter of ESPN reports.
It’s the fourth team in four seasons for Green.
The Seahawks made him a third-round pick in 2018, and he spent four seasons in Seattle. He played 53 games with 24 starts for the Seahawks.
Green then went to the Texans in 2022, the Bears in 2023 and now the Jaguars for this season.
Chicago used him as a rotational rusher in all 17 games last season, and he totaled two sacks and five quarterback hits.
Green has 151 tackles, 19 sacks, 40 quarterback hits and 19 tackles for loss in his career.
The Jaguars are adding a player who’s likely to contribute on special teams.
Per Tom Pelissero of NFL Media, Jacksonville is signing linebacker Tanner Muse.
Muse, a Raiders third-round pick in 2020, appeared in 10 games for the Chargers last year. He played 73 percent of the special teams snaps in games played.
In 2021, Must appeared in all 17 games for the Seahawks with one start. He played 70 percent of special teams snaps and seven percent of defensive snaps for the club.
Jaguars receiver Christian Kirk wasn’t able to play the last five games of the 2023 season due to a core muscle injury, but he still feels bitter about the way Jacksonville’s year ended.
The club lost five of its last six games to end the year 9-8 and miss the postseason after starting 8-3. In his Monday press conference, Kirk said that reality has “100 percent” ratcheted up the urgency for training camp this year.
“I feel like I’m a little bit more — not on the edge, but I’ve got a little bit more of a bite to me this year just with my sense of urgency within practice of just not only pushing myself, but everybody else around me,” Kirk said.”Basically saying, we can’t wait. We can’t wait for the opportunity to come to us. We’ve got to go take it.
“It’s just coming out every single day with the vision of what we have for ourselves in mind and also what happened to us last year, having that bad taste in our mouth because what happened last year is unacceptable and it’s not what we want to do here as a team and as an organization. It’s really just having that chip on our shoulder and just taking that and using it in our day-to-day practice.”
Kirk, 27, caught 57 passes for 787 yards with three touchdowns in 12 games last season. In his first season with Jacksonville in 2021, he had 84 receptions for 1,108 yards with eight TDs.
The Jaguars are down to one kicker on their 90-man roster.
The team announced that they waived Riley Patterson on Monday night. That leaves sixth-round pick Cam Little as the only kicker in Jacksonville.
Patterson played 13 games for the Lions last season before being cut loose and then appeared in two games for the Browns. He was 16-of-18 on field goals and 35-of-37 on extra points.
Patterson also played for the Jags in 2022 and he kicked in seven games for the Lions in 2021.
Little was a sixth-round pick out of Arkansas and is now on path to be the kicker for the Jaguars come Week One.
One of the NFL’s mysteries entering the 2024 season is how teams will handle the new kickoff.
Asked about it in his Monday press conference, Jaguars head coach Doug Pederson said he and his staff are going to monitor teams around the league for the next month. But he doesn’t think teams are going to reveal much before the games count in September.
“I don’t know if we’ll gain a lot from it because I don’t think teams are going to do a lot with it,” Pederson said. “I think you’re going to see, hopefully, we as coaches that are watching it, some different types of kickoffs, whether they want to missile a kick down there, put it on the ground, put it in the corners, down it, or whatever, maybe some of that. But I don’t think, from a scheme standpoint, we’ll see a whole lot, not right now in preseason anyway.
“I’m sure they will [play it safe] because it’s all new and you don’t want to, I don’t think, tip your hand right now, and let teams, especially teams early in the season that we play that can scheme you up.”
Still, Pederson said the preseason kickoffs will tell a little bit about how coaches are thinking about strategy and approach because it’s different for everybody.
“People are going to look up, and if they haven’t been following it, it’s going to be like, ‘Woah, what are we doing?’” Pederson said. “I think each week, as we watch all the games, I think we’ll just continue to learn and grow, and really, I think it comes down to maybe even the types of players that you use on your kickoff team, your kickoff return team. Who’s back there returning the kick? All kinds of things can take place now.”
