Jacksonville Jaguars reportedly interested in trading back, but they shouldn’t
By Daniel Lago
Where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire.
Unless you’re talking about the NFL Draft.
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Every year as the draft inches closer and closer, reports start to leak about teams being interested in every player, prospects having serious injury concerns, and teams claiming to have taken certain players of their board. Most of this is nonsense.
The Jacksonville Jaguars showed no inkling of wanting to draft Blake Bortles with the third overall pick of the 2014 NFL Draft leading up to the night of the first round. Every analyst on television and on Twitter was shocked when Roger Goodell read Bortles’ name, and everyone was praising the Jaguars for keeping their intent under wraps.
This year, reports are surfacing that the Jaguars are interested in moving down from the number 5 spot.
One more pre-draft luncheon takeaway:
— John Oehser (@JohnOehser) April 22, 2016
Trade down from No. 5 possible, but GM David Caldwell doesn't sound as if he's moving up.#Jaguars
I find this to be dubious at best. Sure, if the Jaguars are offered a king’s ransom for the 5th pick, it would make sense to consider a trade. Those kinds of proposals only happen when a franchise quarterback is in the mix and that’s certainly not going to be the case with both the Los Angeles Rams and the Philadelphia Eagles trading up to the first and second pick respectively.
The proposed scenario where the Jaguars do trade back has been if offensive tackle Laremy Tunsil is available at number 5. There would likely be interest from teams to trade into 5 and select Tunsil, but the Jaguars aren’t going to be blown away by any offers. Is it worth trading down and missing out on one of the top defensive prospects (Jalen Ramsey, Joey Bosa, and Myles Jack) to acquire an extra 3rd or 4th round pick? I don’t think so.
This is a deep draft, but the Jaguars are in an interesting scenario where they have a reasonable amount of depth on their roster at some positions, but they don’t have enough blue chip players or difference makers. General manager David Caldwell needs to find an elite player and he’s much more likely to do that at number 5 than later in the first round with a more flawed prospect like Leonard Floyd or Noah Spence.
Just stay at 5 and pick your guy.