Here's one of the media reports:
Reports: Jaguars chasing Julius Thomas, DeMarco Murray
By Jared Dubin | CBSSports.com staff
March 8, 2015 5:00 pm ET
The Jacksonville Jaguars have money to burn, and according to various reports, they're looking to get in at the top of the free agent market. With only $99 million or so committed to their top-51 players and $21.768 million in rollover cap space from 2014, Jacksonville has approximately $68.8 million to work with while looking to fill various holes this offseason.
Speculation over the last few days had the Jags going hard after both Ndamukong Suh and Randall Cobb, but Suh reportedly will sign a record-setting deal with the Dolphins when free agency opens on Tuesday and Cobb re-signed with the Packers on a deal worth $10 million per year. Now, reports from Adam Caplan and Charles Robinson, respectively, have Jacksonville chasing Broncos tight end Julius Thomas and Cowboys running back DeMarco Murray. Thomas is the 12th-ranked player on our free agent big board while Murray checks in at No. 11, making them the two highest-ranked offensive skill players still available.
While neither player has agreed to a contract with the Jaguars just yet, it's interesting to think about what the team might look like with one or both on board. The Jags already have a trio of young, cheap wide receivers with plenty of room for growth on hand for last year's first-round pick Blake Bortles to throw to in Allen Robinson, Allen Hurns and Marqise Lee. All three were rookies last season, when they combined for 136 receptions, 1,647 yards and nine touchdowns. None of them is a target of as high a quality as Thomas, though, who has 108 catches and 24 touchdowns himself over the last two seasons.
People often refer to tight ends as "security blankets," particularly for young quarterbacks like Bortles, but Thomas is much more than that. He's an all-purpose weapon with a particular potency in the red zone, where "it's so easy" for him to find paydirt.
Jacksonville supposedly wants to use Thomas as the "move" tight end, which makes sense given his ability to succeed when lined up anywhere in the formation. In his breakout 2013 season, Thomas lined up in the slot for over 30 percent of his pass routes, catching 25 passes for 314 yards and four scores. It'll certainly be an adjustment going from catching passes thrown by Peyton Manning to Blake Bortles if he does wind up in Jacksonville, but it's likely Thomas would be the surefire No. 1 target with the Jags whereas he had to compete with Demaryius Thomas, Eric Decker, Wes Welker and Emmanuel Sanders for targets the last two years with the Broncos.
Murray, meanwhile, would be a massive upgrade for the Jaguars in the running game. Things were so desperate last offseason that they gave a multi-year deal to Adrian Peterson's former backup Toby Gerhart, but hindsight shows they'd have been better off just keeping Justin Forsett. Jacksonville likely still needs to find a bellcow runner this offseason and they have the money to do so, which is where Murray would come in. While running backs aren't valued as much these days as they used to be, the last week or so has seen both Marshawn Lynch and LeSean McCoy handed huge deals, and if the Jags want to steal Murray away from Dallas, they'll have to pony up. Adding him to the backfield would take a lot of pressure off Bortles to carry the load on offense, and the Jags could also use last year's surprise Denard Robinson as a fill-in and change-of-pace back to keep Murray fresh.
Murray ran behind the league's best offensive line last season, which played a big role in his leading the league in rushing and setting various Cowboys team records, but to ascribe all his success to the line would be a mistake. Football Outsiders has a stat called Adjusted Line Yards, which assigns the offensive line credit for runs at varying levels. They break down further into second-level yards and open-field yards as well, which is where the running backs themselves most often do their own work by breaking tackles and outrunning safeties for big gains.
Dallas led the league in Adjusted Line Yards last season, but they also finished second in both second-level yards and open-field yards. Considering Murray recorded 392 of the Cowboys' 508 carries, it seems reasonable to conclude he was responsible for a good deal of those second-level and open-field yards. He also averaged 2.54 yards after contact per attempt, according to Pro Football Focus, the 12th-best average in the NFL. He'd need both of those skills when running behind Jacksonville's considerably weaker offensive line.
It remains to be seen whether Jacksonville can actually land Thomas or Murray, but they're obviously making every effort to improvement the supporting cast around their young quarterback. Heading into Year 3 of the Gus Bradley regime, they clearly want to start winning some more games, and considering their residence in the AFC South, they might be only a couple big signings away from making some noise.