Del Rio Makes Nice with Leftwich, Names Him Starter for 2007

The Jacksonville Jaguars have clearly had enough of my baseless speculation and have decided to go ahead and name Byron Leftwich the team's starting quarterback in 2007. David Garrard and Quinn Gray will remain on the roster as backups, and the Jags will not be looking for any QBs in free agency. So there.

There had been talk that the rift between Del Rio and Leftwich, which began when the coach benched the player when he wouldn't admit just how badly he was injured (or something like that), might not be fixable. Alas, that may have just been Leftwich's ego getting in the way. After all, Leftwich stayed in a college game at Marshall when he wasn't able to walk and had his linemen carry him to the line of scrimmage. It was a tribute to his toughness.

There's a fine line, however, between toughness and stupidity, and clearly the Jags would prefer that Leftwich avoid putting his career in jeopardy by playing with a bad injury. One could argue that Del Rio had to tie his horse to a tree to keep it from running back into a burning barn, and naturally, Leftwich kicked up a right fuss over that incident.

Nevertheless, the Jags took one look at the free agent market and may have decided that Matt Schaub was no better (and not much different, really) than a healthy Leftwich, and everyone else was worse. So Del Rio and Leftwich buried the hatchet, and the Jags can now spend its cap money on more immediate needs -- like better targets for their strong-armed starting QB. Matt Jones, Ernest Wilford and Reggie Williams aren't scaring anyone.