Week 1: Indianapolis Colts at Jacksonville Jaguars
On the offensive side of the football, there is a similar Swiss Army knife type of player that will be unveiled in Week 1: former Colorado Buffalo Laviska Shenault.
Shenault tumbled in the draft, falling to the Jacksonville Jaguars in the second round. He was viewed as a potential first-round selection, but a sports hernia injury that hampered him at the Combine and required surgery (coupled with some other injury questions from his past) likely contributed to his fall.
When healthy, Shenault is an offensive weapon, perhaps without a specific offensive position. Colorado used him all over the field, aligning him in the slot, on the boundary, at tight end, in the wing, at running back and even at quarterback. He did most of his work out of the slot, but the Buffaloes continued to find ways to get him the football.
Shenault actually tapped into that potential versatility in a pre-draft pitch to all 32 teams. In a piece he penned for The Players’ Tribune he closed with the following statement: “I feel like I’m a combination of three different receivers — Jarvis Landry, Julio Jones and Larry Fitzgerald.”
His new head coach Doug Marrone seems to agree.
You can put him in the backfield. He can play Wildcat. You can put him as the F tight end. You can do a lot of things with him. You see it on his tape in 2018 and 2019. That’s one of the things we looked at.
We went back there and I said [to Shenault], ‘Look, we can do all those things but the whole key is going to be how well you grasp it, how well you pick it up.’ Because if he can, make no mistake about it, we want to be able to do those things.
Against the Indianapolis Colts on the opening weekend, we’ll get a chance to see how the Jaguars intend to use their versatile new weapon.