Former Jaguars' Pro Bowler Speaks on Release

The Jacksonville Jaguars made a pair of big moves before the start of free agency, trading away Christian Kirk and releasing former Pro Bowler Evan Engram.

While many knew the Jaguars may look to go into a new direction under head coach Liam Coen and general manager James Gladstone, it was still a shock to the system of sorts when the Jaguars moved on from two of their most popular and productive players.

Fans and analysts weren't the only ones surprised by the moves, either. In an interview with TheDNVR.com, Engram described his feelings in the wake of the Jaguars making their decision.

“To have such a historic organization like the Denver Broncos call my phone minutes after I got a pretty surprising, kind of bad news about being let go from Jacksonville, and then obviously the Chargers got involved as well, it was just a great experience,” Engram said in the interview.

While the vast majority of the interview was about Engram's role with the Broncos and his offseason recruitment, it is clear Engram was surprised by the Jaguars informing him of his release.

Engram seems to be happy with his role with the Broncos and the next step of his career, and the Jaguars are now moving forward with Brenton Strange as their No. 1 tight end under Coen. Still, it doesn't take away from how impactful and important Engram was to the Jaguars during his three seasons with the franchise.

“It’s always hard letting go of good football players. I have a ton of respect for both of those guys. They’ve done some really good things here. Those were not easy decisions," Coen said at the NFL's annual league meetings earlier this month. "Ultimately, you hate to let go of good football players, but production, right? Those guys did have a good amount of targets, receptions, some critical plays in different moments of different years."

As Gladstone explained after free agency, the moves to move on from Kirk and Engram had more to do with how the Jaguars could attack the roster than anything else.

"Yeah, really have so much respect for the people and the players that both Christian and Evan are, and they meant a lot to the locker room. We'll continue to bring those types of people and players into our ecosystem, but we needed a little bit more flexibility to address the larger scale roster after some departures across the OL as well," Gladstone said.

"So, that was a big part in that. But we do feel like we're in a better position today than we were a couple of weeks ago to make it so that when we enter each decision at each pick point in April we can continue to level up where we are from a personnel perspective.”