Jacksonville Picks Up Trent Edwards On Waivers

Added on Sep 29, 2010 by Jason Kearney in

NFL

It’s been a crazy week for former Buffalo Bills’ starting quarterback Trent Edwards. Since last Wednesday he’s been demoted from his starting position, shopped as trade bait and eventually released by his former team. Now he’s headed south–the Jacksonville Jaguars have picked him up after making a waiver claim. The Jets also put in a claim for Edwards, but the Jags got him due to their worse W/L record. He’s expected to sign on the dotted line this morning and be at practice this afternoon.

If you’re now saying ‘wow, that doesn’t say much about Jacksonville’s confidence in David Garrard’ you would be correct. Move to the head of the class. The Jags have completely lost faith in Gararrd, whom they signed to a $60 million deal after his breakout 2007 season. Garrard has been awful so far in 2010–as in ‘he probably couldn’t play on a CFL team’ awful. He threw four interceptions and was benched in a blowout loss to the Chargers at San Diego in Week 2. Last Sunday he completed 13 of 30 passes for a mere 105 yards and an interception in a home rout by the Philadelphia Eagles. He also was sacked six times, and flubbed a handoff to running back Maurice Jones-Drew. And if you were looking for a profound vote of confidence from head coach Jack Del Rio, guess again–check out this lukewarm endorsement he gave prior to the Edwards pickup:

“As long as he’s our best option, we’ll continue to go with him.”

Ouch! My ex-wives say nicer things about me than that. Garrard is still the starter for now and Del Rio sounded more enthused about him in an interview on the Sirius NFL Network this morning. Well, slightly more enthused:

“[W]e expect him to bounce back. We need him to bounce back. Obviously, we can’t function as a football team if we’re playing that poorly in particular with our passing game.”

He was really enthused about adding Edwards to the team:

“We think it gives us an opportunity to add a guy at an important position. We lost a backup. After the San Diego game we lost Luke McCown and we have a younger guy who we think gives us an opportunity to add depth at that position. Todd Bouman is a guy who knows our system and he’s here as our backup right now but to have a guy who has a chance to go forward beyond just next week and the rest of this season, but beyond that as a prospect, it’s a little bit like adding a draft pick and so we’re excited to have him aboard.”

Asked about how quickly it’ll take Edwards to pick up the Jaguars’ system Del Rio all but waved his new QB’s Stanford diploma in Garrard’s face:

“It’ll take a little time. I think we anticipate that. We’ll find out how much carryover there is. Typically there is some but we’re counting on there being a little bit of a learning curve. He is a smart kid, he did go to Stanford so we’re thinking the learning curve maybe can be accelerated. But we’ll do our best to get him caught up as quickly as possible.”

For now, Garrard is listed as the Jags’ starter for Sunday’s game at Indianapolis but should he struggle don’t be surprised to see Edwards get in the game.