The Jacksonville Jaguars named their team captains for the 2021 season and rookie Trevor Lawrence was among the seven players who received enough votes. The decision came after a preseason where Lawrence rolled his sleeves up and took on every challenge in his way, including beating out former teammate Gardner Minshew II and impressing in a preseason where his whole starting offensive line never took the field together.
“It feels great, man,” said Lawrence “It’s a really cool feeling, especially as a younger guy just having that support from my teammates. Like I said, from being named a starter to now a captain, nothing changes, same expectation. Now it’s time to go out there and win some games, but I’m really excited. It’s definitely an honor. It’s a cool moment for me to be named a captain with those other guys. [There’s] just a bunch of great guys in the locker room, so we had a ton of guys that got votes. But definitely, it’ll be cool.”
Despite being a rookie, there was no hesitation on the Jags’ part to vote for the No. 1 overall pick from April’s draft. In fact, according to Jags coach Urban Meyer, Lawrence ranked third in terms of votes received with linebacker Myles Jack coming in at first.
“I was impressed that he [Lawrence] was up there, I want to say third, in vote-gets,” Meyer said Wednesday. “That’s a credit to him.”
Despite being named a team captain, Lawrence told the media that it wouldn’t necessarily make things easier heading forward, but did give him clarity of how his teammates viewed him. He added that there were several players who were worthy that didn’t get the number of votes that he and the other captains received but understood those players would also play a role in Turing things around.
“Yes and no,” he said. “It definitely, I guess it brings clarity to everything. But at the same time, there’s a ton of guys on our team that won’t have that ‘C’ that are just as much a leader as me or as anyone else. That does mean something, but also there’s a lot of other guys that help lead this thing and we are all in it together. No one person has to carry it all and, like I said, we’re all carrying it. But definitely [it’s] an honor and [I’m] proud for sure.”
Lawrence wasn’t the only rookie quarterback to earn team captain honors as New York Jets rookie Zach Wilson was named a team captain, too. Both players now join the No. 1 overall pick from last season, Joe Burrow, as the only rookies since 2020 to receive such honors from their teammates.