Jefferson and Jeffcoat are both 32, a few years left in there careers. Lemon is 35 and still playing at a high level. My only problems with Jeffcoat is he has only played in 78 games in 6 years. Average 13 games a year. The man is a force when healthy. But, at 13 games a year what is he worth?
Ya, but since he usually stints on the 6GIR (I think?), it really doesn't cost us much SMS for his tub time. The main problem is we seem to sign him dreaming that he'll play 18 games + postseason, when it never happens. And thus we don't hire a really good replacement or rotation guy... and then wonder why our DL is ineffective when JJ is out.
So the answer, if you hire JJ again, is you must hire a very good rotation DE too. I would say they'd have to be at Kongbo level. Probably even better. But not at Betts level. It has to be $120-$150, not $100 or $200. Yes, that would mean we have to be spending more at the DL position. But we tend to really under-man that position relative to other teams already, so it's easy to justify becoming more "normal".
I think many here would agree if we re-sign JJ and stick with a sub-$100k DE backup then KW is failing at fixing this puzzle piece...