Jaguars Claim 5 Players, Make a Change At Kicker
The Jacksonville Jaguars continued to watch their 53-man roster evolve on Wednesday. Fewer than 24 hours after the first 53-man roster was released, the Jaguars added five new players on the waiver wire.
The following players were claimed by the Jaguars on Wednesday. The Jaguars held the top priority on the waiver wire, so this means they acquired every single player they put in a claim for.
- S Tyree Gillespie (Titans)
- RB Jamycal Hasty (49ers)
- K Riley Patterson (Lions)
- WR Kendric Pryor (Bengals)
- LB Ty Summers (Packers)
To make room for the five new additions, the Jaguars released/waived five players who made the initial 53-man roster.
- OL Will Richardson (released)
- K Jake Verity (waived/injured)
- K James McCourt (waived)
- S Josh Thompson (waived)
- OLB Jamir Jones (waived)
“Just watching from afar. A lot of my contacts have been with him and are very familiar with him, and everything I’ve heard is great things, him as a person," Jaguars special teams coordinator Heath Farwell said about Patterson on Wednesday. "I see what I can see on tape, and we’ve been studying all that, but getting the feel from people that I know of the type of person that he is, we’re excited to have him in this organization.”
“They both did a really good job for us. James (K James McCourt) had a good game, had a good practice yesterday, and we still really like where he’s at. Jake (K Jake Verity), unfortunately, wasn’t able to finish up exactly what we wanted, but both those guys did a really good job for us. With that being said, part of our job of getting this roster as good as we can is to evaluate other rosters and see what’s best available. We had been watching several kicker battles as well as other positions to figure out if we can upgrade our roster in any way. Riley (K Riley Patterson) is a guy that we’ve targeted for a while. He was a guy we were hoping would become available. We are fortunate that he did, and here we are. We’re excited to have him.”
Hasty and Pryor now give the Jaguars four running backs and six wide receivers after the Jaguars went light at each position to kick off the 53-man roster process. Pryor starred for the Bengals as an undrafted rookie during the preseason, while Hasty has zone experience with the 49ers.
"Our roster continues to evolve a little bit even through the course of the first couple of weeks of the regular season," Jaguars head coach Doug Pederson said on Tuesaday. We’ve got 16 practice squad players that we’ve got to get in here and always want to keep a couple extra young receivers there, and I’ve kept five and I’ve kept six.
"It depends really on the rest of your team and the makeup of your football team and where you need positions. We’re still looking. We’re always going to look out there, and we’re going to look heavily at the waiver wire later today, and if somebody can come in here and help us and improve our football team and help us win, then we’ll take a look at that.”
