Despite Top Draft Position, Jaguars Must Temper Expectations for Dante Fowler

After the NFL draft, we enter this dark, vacant space as a football writing community. With nothing to look forward to in sight, other than veteran optional workouts and rookie minicamps, everyone in arm’s reach is tasked with pumping out post-draft grades.

You can go back on forth on the value of these exercises, but they do seem to capture the feeling of individual draft classes from a “hype train” standpoint. One franchise’s draft class, the Jacksonville Jaguars’, stands out specifically in that aspect.

Bucky Brooks of NFL Network, Steve Palazzolo of Pro Football Focus, Mel Kiper Jr. of ESPN.com, Chris Burke of Sports Illustrated and Lindsay H. Jones of USA Today, among others, all gave the Jaguars an A- or A-plus-grade for their draft class.

Jalen Ramsey and Myles Jack were both considered consensus top-five talents at full health, with opinions scattered around the media that either could have been the most talented prospects in this particular draft class.

Ramsey fell into the lap of Jacksonville when two quarterbacks came off the board back-to-back to start the event, the San Diego Chargers shocked the world by drafting hybrid defensive lineman Joey Bosa with the first positional pick of the draft and the Dallas Cowboys passed over an impact player at a “premier position” for a chance at catching lightning in a bottle with running back Ezekiel Elliott.

Jack’s story on landing in northern Florida is more blunt: His knee might not hold up for a second contract. Despite basically missing all of his true junior season due to a knee injury, he still had his eyes set on the 2016 NFL draft. In early October, right after Jack made it known to the world that he would be leaving school, his head coach at UCLA, Jim Mora, called his decision “risky,” per Kevin Gemmell of ESPN.com.

Still, many assumed that Jack would be a high draft pick, as he was mostly mocked in the top-10 up until the week of the draft, when Jack acknowledged the reality of possible microfracture surgery, a rough procedure, which has stunted young careers across sports, according to the New York Post’s Bart Hubbuch. 

This quote to me from Myles Jack today about his knee can hardly be comforting to teams. pic.twitter.com/A6BwGYb6lu

— Bart Hubbuch (@BartHubbuch) April 27, 2016

Jadeveon Clowney of the Houston Texans, the 2014 first overall pick, was once viewed as a generational talent coming out of South Carolina. In two years, due to issues with his knee, which included mircrofracture surgery, he has 4.5 NFL sacks to his name in 11 starts.

Some will view Jack as a risk-reward balance. On paper, he’s a short-term impact player who can play at a high level. For a team which finished 29th in the league in allowed first downs per game defensively, led by defensive guru Gus Bradley, who has a 12-36 record in his three years in Jacksonville, it makes sense as to why this leadership would decide to take a swing at Jack in their current situation.

The other top-200 picks, Maryland edge defender Yannick Ngakoue, Notre Dame defensive lineman Sheldon Day and Montana edge defender Tyrone Holmes, also provide upside to the defense. Ngakoue is a young pass-rusher at 21 years old, Day was a player who many thought was ready for the NFL after the 2014 regular season and Holmes, a freak athlete, led the FCS in sacks in 2015, not the more touted Noah Spence.

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