The Jacksonville Jaguars had a rough 2021 season under first-year coach Urban Meyer and it was such a disaster he didn’t make it through a whole season. The team ended up going 3-14 along the way, which was the league’s worst record.
As a result, they made drastic changes by naming a new coach in Doug Pederson. They also spent the most money ever by a team in free agency thanks to and salary cap steadily increasing.
However, NBC Sports reporter Peter King didn’t rank them very high in his power rankings this week, placing them at the No. 29 spot.
Here are his thoughts on the Jags after free agency and the draft:
The Jags spent like drunken sailors on good but not great players in free agency. And with the first pick in the draft, Jacksonville took a projection with great potential who has not been great yet: Travon Walker. But they hired a coach, Doug Pederson, who is very good for a young quarterback, and they have a young quarterback, Trevor Lawrence, who showed signs of being everything he was drafted to be. After the weirdness of the Urban Meyer dynasty, the Jags had nothing to play for in Week 18 against the Colts. For Indy, it was a win-and-in-the-playoffs game. The week of the game, Lawrence went around the locker room and fired up the troops and said they had to win this game. He played his best game of the year (111.8 rating) in a 26-11 skunking of the Colts, the keystone in Indy evicting Carson Wentz from the team. With a better skill set around Lawrence (Christian Kirk, Zay Jones, Evan Engram), the Jags should be an improved team.
It seems King is taking the wait-and-see approach with the Jags, which is fair. They have many questions to be answered on the offensive side in terms of what they are getting from the free-agent additions they made, who should give the unit more production than it did last season. However, if Pederson is still the coach who fans saw make the Philadelphia Eagles postseason material and a Super Bowl LII winner, one has to like the Jags’ chances to likely double their win total and earn a higher spot on King’s final power rankings.
As for the top team on the power rankings, King slotted the Buffalo Bills there. The Los Angeles Chargers, Kansas City Chiefs, Los Angeles Rams, and Green Bay Packers ranked behind them, respectively, in slots two to five.
