Jaylon Smith and Myles Jack Present Huge Risks, but Major Potential Rewards

CHICAGO — They took risks. Huge risks. Maybe the biggest risks of the draft. Maybe the biggest risks of the draft in the past five years. Maybe longer. 

The Cowboys and Jaguars didn’t just roll the dice with their selections. They picked up the dice, grabbed a rabbit’s foot, smothered the dice in a bushel of four-leaf clovers and had the Pope bless them.

The Cowboys took Notre Dame linebacker Jaylon Smith, who had his ACL and LCL surgically repaired, and possibly won’t play during the 2016 season. Look up risk in the dictionary and there’s Smith, patiently waiting for those damn nerves to regenerate.

“Really dumb, silly, absurd pick,” said one AFC scout.

I disagree with this. Smith is potentially so uber-talented, he’s worth the risk, even in the second round, even if he can’t play for a season. But, yeah, I get it.

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The Jaguars took a similar risk. In some ways, actually, a bigger one. They took UCLA linebacker Myles Jack, whose knee may or may not explode in 10 days or 10 years. There hasn’t been a body joint this fretted about since Bo Jackson’s hip.

“Biggest non-character risk pick in recent draft history,” said an NFC front office executive.

Meaning: We often think of risks as a team taking a player who had off-field troubles in college. These risks are different. They are about knees and ligaments and joints, and while they are more palpable—it is easier to measure the mending of an ACL, compared to predicting if a player will rob a bank—they can still be just as career-threatening.

When speaking to people around the sport on Friday night, there was a theme among the responses: The Cowboys and Jaguars are two desperate franchises willing to take risks to turn their fortunes around. This is an old story in football. It’s been done over and over. And here we go again.

What might …

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