“Read your article on the draft today,” my friend ‘Wooly’ texted me last Sunday. “Really liked it but thought you were holding something back,” he added.

It’s not that I was holding anything back, I told him. But the Jaguars clearly have their own ideas about how this team should be built and what it will be able to do.

And you can agree with that or not.

“I think you have to expect them to lie,” season ticket holder ‘Ghost of Chuck’ said as we talked about what the Jaguars said they were doing and what they’re actually doing.

While ‘lying’ might be a bit harsh, there’s no question that the days and weeks leading up to the draft are a time of, let’s say ‘disinformation’ in the NFL.

When you look at what the Jaguars did with the draft and what they said afterwards, it gives a pretty clear picture where Head Coach Doug Marrone and General Manager Dave Caldwell think this team can compete.

When asked if he thought about taking an offensive lineman with the ninth pick in the first round, Caldwell gave a direct and pretty revealing answer.

“We did, but the one we may have considered was probably gone at the time.” In the top eight picks before the Jaguars were on the board, the only offensive lineman taken was Georgia’s Andrew Thomas, a tackle, selected fourth by the Giants.

Cleveland took Alabama’s Jedrick Wills, another tackle, right after the Jaguars at the tenth spot. Tristen Wirfs another tackle from Iowa went 13th to Tampa Bay. Southern Cal’s Austin Jackson went to Miami 18th, Cesar Ruiz from Michigan and Isaiah Wilson of Georgia were also taken in the first round.

So elite offensive linemen were available in this draft, but the Jaguars didn’t select any at that position until Ben Bartch from Division III St. John’s of Minnesota in the fourth round. Bartch looks to have great potential but even the Jaguars admit he’s a ‘project.’

Clearly this draft and the renegotiated deal they made with Andrew Norwell sends the current Jaguars offensive line a message: “You’re it, get better.” Doug Marrone admitted as much.

“I think we have some good competition behind those guys right now,” Marrone said while the draft was going on. “Will Richardson, we have to get him locked him into a position. Tyler Shatley has done a good job for us I think those players have a lot on their plate to make sure they improve. We’ve said that. We really think they’re going to make a big jump.”

In other words, as my friend and colleague Mike DiRocco said in response to a question about the lack of offensive line picks, “They clearly have more confidence in the offensive line than you or the media do.”

Caldwell didn’t use any of his “ammo,” as he put it, of twelve picks to move up or back to get the players they wanted. According to him, they didn’t have to.

“We didn’t acquire picks to get less players, we acquired picks to get more players, and like I said there were so many players that we liked that at the end of it, we were like, ‘I wish I had a couple more picks in the seventh round.”

He admitted they’d have been happy to take wide receiver Laviska Shenault Jr. in the first round if they didn’t think he’d be there when they selected in round two.

“Should we go get Laviska?” Caldwell said about the conversations in the draft room when wide receivers started coming off the board. “We thought about it and I think we just said, ‘Let’s stick to the philosophy of this year’s draft. I’m not saying that’s every year’s draft. Next year, it may be different.”

A deep receiver class and Shenault falling “by the wayside a little bit,” allowed the Jaguars to wait and take him with the 42nd selection.

“If by chance he did go,” Caldwell said of his contingency plan, “We had enough players there where we would have felt good about possibly trading back and still getting one of the players we liked.”

Getting better up front on defense was a big priority; Caldwell said it helps him sleep at night knowing there are guys on the roster who can rush the passer. Marrone also likes the size they now have up front.

“Well the No. 1 identity that we have been talking about is the identity to be able to stop the run. In order to do that, you have to be big up front, you have to be physical and you are going to have to be able to tackle. That is something that has hurt us. That is something that we have put a priority on.”

Part of Marrone’s vision of what kind of defense the Jaguars can have relied on getting a “Number one type corner.” Either Jeff Okudah or C.J. Henderson would have fit the bill and when Henderson was there with the ninth pick, they didn’t hesitate.

“He is a big guy. He can play against guys that have speed, he can play against guys that are big and try to outmuscle them,” Marrone said, explaining why that position let’s them do so many things elsewhere on defense. “At the same time, we want to be able to cover on third down and let our rushers go.”

At quarterback, Marrone said Gardner Minshew would be the guy behind center if they rolled the ball out there right now. And Caldwell said they’d look at signing a veteran QB in addition to selecting Jake Luton from Oregon State in the sixth round. It’s the third year in a row the Jaguars have used their sixth round selection on a quarterback.

Based on Marrone’s “no drama” emphasis, the Jaguars aren’t going to sign Cam Newton and Jameis Winston said he wanted to get a “Harvard education” by signing with New Orleans. Now that Andy Dalton has been released by the Bengals, his logical connections to the Jaguars through offensive coordinator Jay Gruden make him an easy choice if he’s willing to work for a reduced rate. And former Jaguars QB Blake Bortles, a Caldwell 1st round draft pick, is still a free agent. Before you say that’s crazy, as sturdy and athletic as Blake is, couldn’t he fit a Taysom Hill kind of role for the Jaguars?

When asked if he’d told Leonard Fournette’s agent to tell Leonard to prepare to play in Jacksonville this season, Caldwell gave a quick, “No,” and didn’t elaborate.

But he gave some insight into how the Jaguars seem to think they can move on, if necessary, without Fournette, and with the guys they have and not address running back in the draft.

“I think maybe it’s misunderstood of how we feel about the other guys we have in our room besides Leonard and Roc(quell Armstead) and Devine (Ozigbo),” Caldwell explained. “And those are two guys that as you look down, you start to get into the fourth, fifth round, and you’re like, ‘Do we like these guys better than Rock and Devine?’ And the real answer is no.”

Regarding the Yannick Ngakoue situation, Caldwell said they’d welcome him back with ‘open arms.’ He also noted that there weren’t any offers for Yan from other teams, mainly because of his long-term contract demands. Expect the Jaguars to be willing to let Ngakoue sit if he doesn’t sign the franchise tender. That would be really dumb on his part. As I’ve said, he’s getting bad advice.

What kind of team will they be?

“Young, smart, tough. Guys that love football,” Marrone said. “Everything that we’ve talked about, not a lot of stuff going on that’s going to distract them, a bunch of guys that are excited for their opportunity, appreciative. These guys want to go to work. They want to play.”

“You’re never going to come out of a draft completely satisfied. But this is about as satisfied as we’ve been,” Caldwell said in summary. “We feel good about the players we got and filled some needs.”

Agree or disagree with what they’re doing, the Jaguars brass are true believers in their vision. They got the players they wanted, and the kind of players they wanted and expect to compete now. Not rebuild, not ‘roll into it’ but compete in the AFC South if they have an NFL season in 2020.

There are a lot of moving parts for any NFL team when it comes to the yearly college draft.

This year there will be even more moving parts as the NFL will conduct the draft virtually with everybody, from GM’s, scouts, coaches, medial staff and anybody else with input to a team’s pick meeting via video conference. NFL organizations will use Microsoft Teams to communicate. The Jaguars expect to have everybody who is normally in the draft room on that call. From there, all thirty-two teams will use WebEx to be in touch with the league. If it all crashes, they’ll pick up the phone.

So it’ll be a complicated process, seven rounds over three days with the first round this coming Thursday. There was some lobbying for more time in the first round and even more picks and honestly in this environment, it sounded like whining.

Jaguars General Manager Dave Caldwell wasn’t part of that carping chorus. He said he’s pretty comfortable with the mechanics of how it will happen this week. There won’t be any time problems making trades in the ten minutes allowed in the first round according to Caldwell but he did say, “I might have to see if my left hand is as good as my right to get something done in the later rounds.”

Teams have all kinds of questions as they go into the off-season and prepare for the draft. Decisions made in the draft can impact franchises for years.

What did they do in free agency? What specific needs to they have? Do they want to get younger? Can they fit players under the salary cap? Are they rebuilding or just reloading for a playoff run?

That’s why when Jaguars General Manager Dave Caldwell said, “We want to hit on all twelve,” when asked about the big number of draft picks he has on Thursday, he might have been giving a standard answer but he might also be thinking that’s exactly what the Jaguars need to happen to be competitive. “We want to make every one of them count,” he added.

The Jaguars don’t have one of those questions to answer. They have all of them. And not much time to find solutions.

“If we went to play right now and Gardner Minshew is our guy, I’m excited about that,” Head Coach Doug Marrone said. So they appear to be confident enough in Minshew that quarterback with their ninth pick doesn’t seem like a possibility.

While saying he feels like he could line up and play with the guys on the roster right now, Marrone was excited about the draft possibilities.

“Do we want to add players? Absolutely,” he said. “We are going to have a great opportunity to do so in this draft with 12 picks. My personal philosophy is you can never go wrong with taking who you view is the best player.”

Marrone was also open to developing a team based on the talent available, and not the other way around.

“We want to get playmakers and make them make plays,” he said. “When you put a player on the field as a starter, you’re saying ‘I have confidence in that player.’ Am I happy with Gardner,? Absolutely.
A lot depends on how Gardner progresses. If he’s hot, we’ll roll with him.”

And he hammered home the point of what kind of team he expects the Jaguars to be in 2020.

“We’re going to be a younger football tem. Team concept, not a lot of drama,” he said, emphasizing the ‘no drama’ point again. “Great teammates and guys in the locker room.”

As you might imagine, teams rehearse what is going to happen on draft day, coming up with all kids of scenarios in their own mock drafts leading up to that day. They feel like they’re prepared for any eventuality.

Last year though, was pretty unique.

“We ran over a hundred scenarios in our draft room,” one senior Jaguars personnel official told me, “and not once did Josh Allen fall to us.”

Perhaps that was a bit of hyperbole since Jaguars General Manager Dave Caldwell denied that this week saying, “There were a few scenarios where Josh fell to us.”

Either way, they were surprised, and fortunate when the player they considered one of the top two in the draft fell in their lap.

You can tell when that happens for a team by the amount of time it takes for the previous pick announcement to be made and when the “pick is in” graphic comes up on the screen. Last year, it was almost immediate.

This year the number of players in the draft the Jaguars consider elite is a little higher.

“Four,” Caldwell said without hesitation when I asked him how many players in the top nine this year he wouldn’t hesitate to take if they’re still available when the Jaguars are on the board. You’d figure that Joe Burrow and Chase Young would be two of them.

Overall, the Jaguars have the draft split by offense and defense.

“Offensively you can get a good player late,” Caldwell said. “Defensively there’s a big drop off and there’s not as much depth.”

It’s apparent Alabama Quarterback Tua Tagovailoa is the lynchpin to what happens in the first 20 picks in this year’s draft. Some teams covet him; others aren’t convinced, based on his injury record that he can hold up under the pounding an NFL quarterback must endure.

One thing seems certain: If there’s a run on quarterbacks in the top six or seven, one of the four players the Jaguars would like to have at nine will still be there.

With two picks in the first round the Jaguars have plenty of options and lots of possibilities. Caldwell said he’d let it play out in front of him. If all of the players they like are gone early they could trade back.

Or if the exact opposite is happening, the Jaguars could go in the other direction.

“If you are sitting there at No. 9 and No. 20 and there is only one guy you like left at pick No. 5,” Caldwell said. “You might have to use some of that ammo to go up and get the guy that you want.”

He added that the Jaguars have worked some scenarios to trade up or back and have been in touch with GM’s across the league to discuss some of the possibilities.

Just a couple of years ago, Caldwell didn’t hesitate to call Jalen Ramsey when the FSU cornerback fell to the Jaguars with the fifth pick in the 2016 draft. The Cowboys had the pick in front of the Jaguars and as soon as Roger Goodell in Chicago announced “Ezekiel Elliott, running back, Ohio State”, Caldwell was on the phone. It was a situation the Jaguars knew was a possibility, but considered it very remote. When a player like Ramsey falls in the draft, some teams might pass but others will snatch him right away, and that’s what the Jaguars thought about Ramsey that spring.

That’s why when a player of the talent level Josh Allen has does fall, some teams start to wonder why and pass while others have such high marks on him they can’t say no.

You might remember Dan Marino’s Hall of Fame career started with him falling all the way to the second to last pick in the first round in 1983. He was the sixth quarterback taken after drug rumors scared teams off. It’s why the Packers took Aaron Rodgers in the first round with Hall of Famer Brett Favre still on the roster. Rodgers could have been the number one pick but when the ‘Niners took Alex Smith he started to fall. Green Bay didn’t need a quarterback but they couldn’t pass on him.

In 1995, he Jaguars did the same with Rob Johnson. They didn’t need a quarterback; they already had Steve Beurlein and Mark Brunell. But after the first day, Johnson was the only player left on their board they thought would be picked in the first three rounds. Tom Coughiin considered him borderline first round talent. They took Johnson, who won an important game for them a couple of years later in Baltimore, then traded him to Buffalo for the draft pick that eventually became Fred Taylor.

One thing that wasn’t evident during their pre-draft conference call was panic. Neither Caldwell nor Marrone seemed under undue stress or pressure although Shad Khan seems to have given both men one year to get this right. They didn’t have and telltale paranoia that usually shows itself when decision-makers are under the gun.

So good for them, and let’s hope they have a little luck. They could use it.

Author’s Note:

I wanted to just take a second here to give you a sad update on two people you might have read about in this column over the last year.

My friend of nearly forty years, Sharon Siegel-Cohen lost her battle with ALS last week. Sharon was a newscast line producer when I first arrived in television here in Jacksonville in 1981. We became friends right away as I got my feet wet and she helped me learn about the city. She was so talented, she was promoted out of that position quickly and moved on to stations in Atlanta and Tampa before coming back to Jacksonville in a management role. Because of her promotions and moves we didn’t work closely together at our jobs but we became close friends. Sharon was about the kindest and most easygoing person I’ve ever met who also kept one foot firmly planted in reality. I don’t know that I ever heard a cross word out of her and she was such a superb judge of character that just one tilt of her head was all you needed to know. Her fight with ALS seemed supremely unfair but I never heard her complain and she always kept her wry sense of humor. As said in her obituary, which she wrote, “I am lucky to have had a wonderful life. My final wish is to find a cure for ALS. Lou Gehrig was diagnosed in 1939. It’s time to find a cure.” Sharon was only 62 years old and I’ll miss her terribly.

We also lost Jim Frey last week. Frye had a lifelong career in baseball with a storied minor league playing career and even more success as a coach, manager and GM during stops in Baltimore, Kansas City and Chicago. Frey spent most of the year in Ponte Vedra near his family after retiring and when he found out I was from Baltimore, we spent a lot of hours talking baseball and the Orioles. An avid golfer, Frey shot his age (88) at Marsh Landing last summer. It was the 500th time he’d done that in the last 20 years. Jim was smart, a great storyteller and fun to be around. I’ll miss him as well.