Draftees the Jaguars regret ignoring in favor of RB Leonard Fournette in 2017

No. 1 draftee the Jaguars regret ignoring in favor of Leonard Fournette: Deshaun Watson, QB

Not many analysts projected Patrick Mahomes as the best quarterback prospect in the 2017 draft. Mel Kiper Jr. of ESPN wasn't particularly high on him and the Chicago Bears thought Mitch Trubiski was going to have the more productive career.

Mahomes got the last laugh in the end, as he's established himself as the top passer in the league while winning two Super Bowls in his young career. If he keeps this pace, he will be a surefire first-ballot Hall-of-Famer and even teams that weren't in need of a quarterback in 2017 surely regret passing on him.

Having said that, Mahomes wasn't the only good quarterback to come out of the 2017 draft. Two picks after the Kansas City Chiefs selected him, the Houston Texans took Deshaun Watson at No. 12, so the Jaguars didn't pass on one but two franchise signal-callers in 2017.

But let's focus on Watson for the moment. He was suspended 11 games in 2022 for violating the league's conduct policy and he wasn't particularly sharp when he stepped onto the football field, completing 58.2 percent of his passes for 1,102 yards with seven touchdowns and five interceptions. However, it's important to note that he hadn't played in nearly two years and was entering his first season with the Cleveland Browns, having been traded last March.

The Jaguars have a franchise quarterback in Trevor Lawrence and they wouldn't probably want it any other way but imagine if they had gone with Watson four years prior, the AFC South landscape would have surely looked very different.

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