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The Jacksonville Jaguars listed their "released" players on Friday afternoon, the first and only team in the NFL to do so for final cutdown day. Just about every other NFL team waited until Saturday to make and announce their cuts, but because of foresight by general manager Dave Caldwell, the team was able to trade D'Anthony Smith for a draft pick rather than cutting him.
The reason the Seattle Seahawks gave up a draft pick for Smith is because they didn't think he would make it to them in the waiver order, so by announcing early who was being released, Caldwell essentially put 21 players on the public trading block. The final cuts didn't have to be turned into the NFL until 6 p.m. ET on Saturday, so this gave the NFL teams 24 hours notice that all of these players were available.
By going ahead and listing the Jaguars cuts publicly, Caldwell turned a player who wasn't going to make the roster into a potential additional 2014 NFL Draft pick.
Now compare this method of cutting players to that of Gene Smith in 2012, when Smith didn't publicly make the Jaguars cuts available until hours after the official cut deadline. Smith was apparently afraid that if the names became public, teams would become aware and claim players he was trying to stash on the practice squad.
None of the players were claimed.
It's small things like what Caldwell did to turn a cut player into a draft pick that already magnify the drastic differences between the two general managers.