It’s no secret in the NFL that the Jacksonville Jaguars are in the market for a quarterback. They haven’t had a true franchise player at the position since Mark Brunell left the team in 2003, and following a 1-15 season that netted it the No. 1 overall pick for the first time in franchise history, that’s expected to change.
In an interview with NFL insider Adam Schefter, new Jacksonville coach Urban Meyer discussed the first overall pick and the due diligence the staff did in preparing to make it. Though not flat-out saying who the pick would be, he did seem to concede that it will indeed be a quarterback.
It’s widely expected that that quarterback will be Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence, who’s considered the best prospect in the draft and a generational prospect at the position. But according to Meyer, the team scouted two other prospects heavily, as well: BYU’s Zach Wilson and Ohio State’s Justin Fields.
“We went, I want to say, at least four, five, to six weeks,” Meyer told Schefter. “I mean, we were really deep, and then we narrowed it down. And then you’ve had your top-2 or top-3 that you moved forward with a series of Zoom calls, we did the best we could. We split up on pro days, sent a guy out to BYU, on to Ohio State, obviously out to Clemson, and those are the three that we identified, and we did a deep dive on those guys.”
The expectation from the moment the team moved into position to pick first overall has been that Lawrence would be the selection there. Still it is interesting (but not shocking) that Meyer and his staff took the team to check out Fields and Wilson, the latter being almost universally projected to go immediately after Lawrence to the New York Jets at No. 2.
Meyer understands the significance of this pick, especially in his first season. If it goes well, it will set the franchise up to win for a decade or more to come. If not, it would be a difficult mistake to bounce back from.
“I think you just got to make sure you’re doing the right thing,” he said. “Our success and failure will be dependent upon this pick.”
Even with this information, there’s no reason to think that the team will make any move other than taking Lawrence first overall. But it just goes to show that you can never be too sure in this league, even when the right answer may seem abundantly clear to many.
[The following quotes were mostly transcribed by The Spun]