Dante Fowler Jr. Looked Good in Drills Before His Injury

Lost amid the news of Dante Fowler Jr.’s ACL injury this weekend was the fact that he seemed to be everything the Jacksonville Jaguars could have hoped for before going down with injury.

This may seem like piling on during a trying time for a young NFL team, but Fowler’s ability was apparent during the Jaguars rookie minicamp, flashing his lofty potential during the drills. That kind of ability won’t see the football field until after the 2015 season, which hurts the Jaguars. While they won’t know what kind of production they could have had from Fowler during the season, getting a taste in practice and then having it ripped away is a bit harsh in a cosmic sense.

Here’s what Jaguars senior writer John Oehser had to say in his What We Learned piece:

"When healthy, Fowler is special. What was understandably lost on Friday because of the injury is that Fowler looked really, really good in practice. He looked tired between drills, but that’s to be expected from a rookie in rookie minicamp. When working in individual drills, you could see Fowler’s burst, explosion and even his physicality. That’s what he’ll need to get back after the long rehabilitation/recovery process."

For some of us, hearing that Dante Fowler is special is nothing new. We expected him to be special the minute he touched a football field in the pros. For others, we expected more production from other top pass rushing talents in the 2015 NFL Draft, thinking that Fowler was among the best at his position but in no way special compared to his peers. Still, losing a top talent at a position is difficult, especially when you have accounts of him displaying burst and physicality that the team needed from him.

The Fowler selection and his subsequent injury will haunt the Jaguars for 2015 and hopefully not longer than that. He has some immense potential and seems to be the real deal. We have to keep that in mind as we track his recovery and rehabilitation process this year. We can’t label him injury prone or anything like it right now. We just have some delayed gratification coming our way when he finally puts on his helmet, pads, and cleats and shows us all why the Jaguars were right to take him third overall in the 2015 NFL Draft.

Next: The Jacksonville Jaguars Sign Five Players From Rookie Minicamp

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