JACKSONVILLE — What does a team with the No. 1 pick but no need for a quarterback and a desire to move down but no trade partners do in the most anonymous, unpredictable NFL Draft in years?
The Jacksonville Jaguars, picking first for the second straight year, went with the best athlete. Will he end up as the best player? The answer to that currently unanswerable question will determine if this latest Jags power structure — GM Trent Baalke and coach Doug Pederson — has any legs.
Jaguars select Travon Walker at No.1
By the time Pederson and Baalke went on the clock here Thursday night, the league’s worst-kept secret — that they would take Georgia defensive lineman Travon Walker No. 1 — was a secret in name only. Sportsbooks pulled the Jags pick prop bet after the odds on Walker soared to a staggering minus -1500. So, credit the sharps for figuring it out. And credit the Jaguars for having a united front Thursday night, insisting any reports that there was dissension within the ranks about the pick was hogwash.
“There was never a non-consensus,” Baalke said here Thursday night. “There was a lot of collaboration through this process. We never had that debate. What we did is take a look at each prospect, how they fit, how they fit our system, how they fit the organization, the culture, and we worked from there. We took them all independently and we worked through them.
“We just felt at the end of the day this was the best pick for this organization at this time.”
But if everyone was on board with taking a pass rusher with 9.5 career sacks ahead of the likes of Aidan Hutchinson and Kayvon Thibodeaux, that means everyone is on the hook for the pick’s success or failure. And even the powers that be acknowledged here that the Walker pick is a projection. They love his wide receiver speed. They love his versatility — pointing out that Walker played everywhere from nose tackle to the 7-technique in Athens.
Baalke’s infatuation with Walker began when he saw him play in person last October, and only grew throughout the draft process. Scouts weren’t even sure Walker would go pro this cycle early in the year. Nonetheless, the more the Jaguars evaluated him, the more they liked him. They weren’t as concerned about his stats as others, pointing to the scheme the Bulldogs ran as a reason for his limited production.
“We feel very strongly about him as a player that we are going to end up with a good football player,” Pederson said. “But it’s not going to be without a lot of work on his part.
“So the ceiling is up to him. We’re going to do our best to put him in position to reach that ceiling, but at the end of the day it’s really on these guys, these young men to come in, put in the time both mentally and physically, to reach the ceiling that they’re all capable of reaching.”
Expectations for Pederson
The result matters, of course. But so does the process. And that process needs to be collaborative after a year of extreme dysfunction. Urban Meyer was one of the worst coaching hires this century, so the bar for Pederson to clear in Year 1 is low.
Develop Trevor Lawrence. Win some games. Don’t humiliate his coaches. Don’t kick his players.
And don’t pick No. 1 ever again. He has pledged that the Jaguars won’t, but that’s easy to say in April.
Things always seem to have a way of going sideways in Jacksonville. Cursed isn’t the right word, but it’s not far off. So, it wasn’t altogether surprising when news broke that Walker was involved in a significant car accident in recent days.
“Things happen,” Walker, who was uninjured, told reporters. “There was nothing to be upset over. I’m a regular human being just like everyone else.”
The Jaguars knew about the incident and were satisfied by the explanation. The momentum grew for Walker being the pick in recent weeks. The final decision was made Wednesday when Baalke and Pederson met with owner Shad Khan. And it was unanimous, Baalke and Pederson insisted — no matter what you might have read.
“I know it’s out there and I just want to go on the record and say it was never that way,” Pederson said of the reported divide. “I don’t know where that came from. That’s one of the things that I’ve loved about our process is the communication and us being on the same page. These sort of unnamed sources, so to speak, I don’t get into a lot of that.
“A lot of work went into making this selection tonight, and we’re just fired up to have Travon in the building.”
