Jordan Shipley Offers Jacksonville Jaguars Untapped Potential

The Jacksonville Jaguars new regime has spent this offseason looking for young free agents that still offer the potential for improvement and becoming significant contributors on what figures to be one of the youngest rosters in the NFL next season.

Perhaps the most intriguing of these free agents is wide receiver Jordan Shipley, who has a chance to earn significant playing time in a very young and promising group of wide receivers. Shipley flashed some of that potential late last season with the Jaguars in which he caught 23 passes for 244 yards and a touchdown after being signed off of the street. The tape that Shipley put out late last season was obviously impressive enough for new Jaguars general manager Dave Caldwell to offer him a two-year deal.

Now with the Jaguars parting ways with Laurent Robinson, Shipley has a chance to become the third receiving option behind Cecil Shorts and Justin Blackmon. If Shipley can return to form in 2013, whoever is playing quarterback for the Jaguars will have a nice complement of targets to throw to.

Shipley, a third-round pick by the Cincinnati Bengals in the 2010 draft, immediately displayed his potential in his rookie year by catching 52 passes for 600 yards. However, his career was derailed early in the 2011 season after he suffered a torn ACL. After the injury the Bengals moved on and he spent most of the first half of the 2012 season out of football except for one game he played with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.