JACKSONVILLE, Fla. The Jacksonville Jaguars are a little more than a week away from the franchise quarter the team has been trying to find for two decades.
Trevor Lawrence is the best quarterback prospect since Andrew Luck (and perhaps Peyton Manning), the fourth-highest ranking quarterback ESPN NFL draft analyst Mel Kiper Jr. ever graduated and a man who has lost just four games as an appetizer since his freshman. years of high school.
He’s so good that he’s Gil Brandt, who has nominated nine future Hall of Famers in 29 seasons, as the vice president of the Dallas staff, to describe him like this: ‘Trevor Lawrence is [John] Elway Athlete [and] Crew accuracy. So I think you get the best of both. ” A franchise that hasn’t done much right since the NFL’s best record in 1999 and has lost ten or more games in nine of the past ten seasons is expected to last. Lawrence with the No. 1 pick in next week’s draft (April 29-May 1, ESPN / ESPN App). Jaguars fans – as well as those within the organization, especially when it comes to tickets – are understandable and hope that Lawrence is the key to the successful success of the franchise and becoming an annual playoff candidate.
But a little caution to temper the high expectations: setting up a quarterback with the first overall pick is no guarantee of a future Super Bowl appearance. Or even a playoff game. And, in some cases, not even a season with a winning record.
What does history say?
Eight of the 25 quarterbacks overall taken for the first time since the AFL / NFL merger in 1970 reached a Super Bowl with the team they fielded, but only three won a championship: Terry Bradshaw (Pittsburgh Steelers ), Troy Aikman (Dallas Cowboys) and Peyton Manning (Indianapolis Colts). Three others – Jim Plunkett (Oakland / Los Angeles Raiders), John Elway (Denver Broncos) and Eli Manning (New York Giants) – win Super Bowls with subsequent teams, while Elway and Manning trade shortly after being drafted.
Eli Manning, drafted by the San Diego Chargers in 2004, is the last fullback to be a Super Bowl winner overall (seasons 2007 and 2011). Only two of the eleven quarterfinals taken for the first time since Eli Manning reached a Super Bowl – Cam Newton, with the Carolina Panthers, and Jared Goff, with the Los Angeles Rams, lost the game. Five of the 11 have not even made it to the playoffs. Bradshaw (four) and Aikman (three) are the only such backs to win several Super Bowls with the teams they have lined up. Eli Manning won two with the Giants, Elway two with the Broncos and Plunkett two with the Raiders. Somehow – perhaps because of Tom Brady’s ridiculous seven rings (and counting?) – the Super Bowl wins have become one of the defining quarterbacks. This can be a little unfair, because even the multiple Super Bowl winners had enough help, whether it was Hall of Fame receivers or runs, top 10 defense or multiple All-Pros and Pro Bowlers.
• Bradshaw played along with four other Hall of Famers on offense (center Mike Webster, returning Franco Harris and wide receivers Lynn Swann and John Stallworth), in addition to the Steel Curtain defense which included four more Hall of Famers.
• Aikman played alongside Michael Irvin, a wide receiver, and Emmitt Smith, both of Hall of Famers, who ran back, and Smith is the leading rusher of the NFL. On top of that, the Cowboys finished in the top-10 in defense and overall defense in each of the three years they won the Super Bowl.
• Elway had three other Hall of Famers on offense: Terrell Davis, tighthead prop Shannon Sharpe, and attacking Gary Zimmerman. Elway’s two Super Bowl winning teams also finished 11th or better in defense and overall defense.
• Peyton Manning’s defense was on the leaderboard and total defense in the 1920s the year he won the Super Bowl with Indianapolis, but Edgerrin James and wide receiver Marvin Harrison went to the Hall of Fame.
• Eli Manning did not have a Hall of Famer next to him in attack, nor did he have a statistically strong defense, but he did get help from two incredible late-in-the-throw and catch shots, as well as a rush that plagued Tom Brady in both Super Bowl wins.
• Plunkett won his Super Bowls with his third team, the Raiders, after not doing so with the Patriots (who drafted him in 1971) and the 49ers. Those Raiders championship teams had a lot of star power. Offensively, they had four Hall of Famers: Marcus Allen, the attack, Art Shell, the tight end Dave Casper and the guard Gene Upshaw. And they boasted three more on defense: Howie Long, the corner from Mike Haynes and Ted Hendricks.
Coaching can also not be overlooked. Here is the list of head coaches for the six fullbacks who were overall first to win Super Bowls: Chuck Noll (Steelers), Jimmy Johnson and Barry Switzer (Cowboys), Tom Coughlin (Giants), Mike Shanahan (Broncos), Tony Dungy (Colts)) and Tom Flores (Raiders). Noll, Johnson and Dungy are in the Hall of Fame. Flores is being inaugurated this summer.
Urban Meyer has yet to coach a game in the NFL, but he is one of the best coaches in the football history of the college game. He has won two national titles in Florida and one in Ohio State and a combined 148-24 series with five conference titles at those schools. This could reduce the pressure on Lawrence.
“Of course, whenever you are the first choice, you will also feel the weight,” said Kirk Herbstreit, ESPN’s football analyst. “But as for the franchise in a different direction, I think the timing for him is good because you have a high-profile first-year head coach who gets a lot of people dissecting every week as much as the quarterback.
‘Like, if it was a Doug Marrone, everything’s going to be on Trevor Lawrence because he [Marrone] has been there for a number of years. ‘
Jags are on the clock
Where does it leave the Jaguars and Lawrence after 8:30 PM ET on April 29th?
That’s when the real work began. Over the next few seasons, the Jaguars will have to put together the roster with several players becoming Pro Bowlers or All-Pros (and maybe even Hall of Famers). Even if Lawrence changes into the Elway-Manning combination as Brandt believes, he will still need help. ESPN’s Mike Clay has the Jags’ grid rating out 31st of the 32 NFL teams entering the draft.
The Jaguars have four players who each made one Pro Bowl in the rankings (defensive end Josh Allen, wide receiver DJ Chark Jr., cornerback Shaquill Griffin and linebacker Joe Schobert), but only Allen and Chark did it with the Jaguars . The return Jamal Agnew is an All-Pro.
Even though the biggest backs of the game had help, it was the key to winning the Super Bowls. This puts tremendous pressure and expectations on Lawrence, as every quarterback took first place. But maybe it’s a little more unfair in Jacksonville, because it looks like Lawrence is being counted on to essentially save the franchise. The Jaguars always seem to be considered a relocation risk, and owner Shad Khan is constantly on the lookout for new local revenue streams, which include an annual home game in London from 2013 to ’19. That contract with the league expired after last season – when the Jaguars would play two games there, which did not happen due to the pandemic – and the team would like to renew.
Sustained success and the fight for a championship will definitely generate more local revenue. The fact that Lawrence is becoming the league’s next big young QB is one of the keys to that.
“Every player [taken atop the draft]”It’s like you have to win three or four Super Bowls to declare what it is,” said Mark Dominik, former general manager of Tampa Bay. When he comes in the post-season, he does his job. But Trevor is a rare guy. If you talk to any player at Clemson for the past three years, he is constantly praised over the years. I think this is an opportunity for him to go to a team that is a little more loaded than people realize and that has the potential to make an offensive impact. ‘High expectations are nothing new for Lawrence. to win two state titles at Cartersville (Georgia) High School, was the country’s No. 1 recruiter and follows Deshaun Watson on Clemson.
‘I do not think there’s anything he’s going to see in Jacksonville that will make him feel weight he’s not felt yet, and to be honest with you, [it] is what he knows, “Herbstreit said.” He has known the weight to a varying degree since he was in high school. I know this is probably his biggest strength: how he will handle the pressure of trying to turn around a franchise. ‘
This is historically a difficult question, and some good quarterbacks have not managed it or have not been able to achieve sustained success. But there is the belief that Lawrence could become the third quarterback to be the first overall draft since Eli Manning in 2004 to reach a Super Bowl. “I see no reason why he should not be a good full-back,” Brandt said. ‘You do not win as many championships in high school as a true first-year student in the state of Georgia, where football is very good, and then win [a championship] at Clemson if you do not want anything going on. ‘