Jacksonville Jaguars roster ranked 24th by Pro Football Focus
By Daniel Lago
The Jacksonville Jaguars have acquired a reasonable amount of talent over the last few years, but it hasn’t helped them on the field or in PFF’s rankings.
A.J. Bouye. Calais Campbell. Malik Jackson.
The Jacksonville Jaguars have signed arguably the three best free agents over the last two seasons, a fact that can be skewed both positively and negatively.
While it’s nice that the Jaguars were able to acquire some extremely talented players, it’s an indictment on the state of their roster that their best players are recently acquired free agents.
With that in mind, it’s actually rather difficult to accurately evaluate how the Jacksonville Jaguars roster looks in comparison to the rest of the league.
Pro Football Focus recently put out a ranking of every team by the talent on their roster and the Jacksonville Jaguars came in near the bottom.
"24. Jacksonville JaguarsBiggest strength: Free-agent acquisition Calais Campbell is one of the league’s most disruptive interior forces, and he had the best season of his career in 2016 at age 30. With J.J. Watt injured, Campbell’s 90.4 PFF grade trailed only Aaron Donald.Biggest weakness: While the Jaguars are stocking up on interior defenders, they don’t have much talent on the edge. Rookie third-round pick Yannick Ngakoue had a respectable 47 total pressures last season, but he was extremely poor as a run defender.By the numbers: Blake Bortles’ PFF grade collapsed from 80.3 in 2015 to 52.9 last season. His passer rating while under pressure was just 49.7, and he threw nine interceptions and just three TDs."
A short but fairly correct analysis. Campbell is going to be a very good player for the Jaguars, but his addition doesn’t really give the Jaguars more of an edge rushing presence. Dante Fowler Jr. is going to make or break that position group. And of course, Blake Bortles is going to determine how “talented” this roster really is.
Tangentially, the most interesting part of the rankings was where the Tennessee Titans came in – 3rd, behind only the Atlanta Falcons and the New England Patriots. If that’s the case, the Jaguars have one heck of a challenge this upcoming season in the AFC South.