The on-field drills at the 2023 NFL Scouting Combine are in the books, but determining how much they matter is a challenging exercise.
While there’s obvious value in seeing exactly how athletic prospects are (otherwise, why do the drills), it’s also a little silly to let anything other than game tape determine how players stack up.
With that in mind, it doesn’t quite feel right to make many changes to the first-round mock draft published last week.
Instead, here’s a Jacksonville Jaguars-centric mock draft with a guess at nine players the team could target with their selections in the 2023 NFL Draft:
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Jaguars coach Doug Pederson was with the Philadelphia Eagles when the team drafted Dallas Goedert early, even though they already had a Pro Bowl tight end in Zach Ertz.
Evan Engram or not, Washington makes a ton of sense for the Jaguars.
Despite getting a career-year out of Engram, the Jaguars still had blocking specialist Chris Manhertz on the field nearly 40 percent of time.
Washington, a 6’7, 264-pound Goliath of a tight end, would be like an additional offensive lineman on the field for Jacksonville. But unlike Manhertz, he can offer plenty in terms of receiving skills too.
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Forbes is one of the more unique draft prospects of 2023.
On one hand, he’s an experienced and productive cornerback with the length that Trent Baalke loves, the most pick sixes in FBS history, and 4.35 speed. On the other hand, he’s the Jack Skellington of the draft class at 166 pounds.
That unique physique in a class full of good cornerbacks could mean Forbes is available in the middle of the second round where the Jaguars would be well-positioned to give his skills a chance to blossom.
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If the Jaguars want to find an edge rusher that checks all their typical boxes, they’ll have to pick one earlier than the tail end of Day 2.
Here I believe they’ll have a shot at drafting a productive and über-athletic player in Young, who was an All-SEC selection last year and had a fantastic combine performance.
However, Baalke has never drafted an edge rusher with arms shorter than 33 inches and Young’s arms are a half-inch under that threshold at 32.5 inches. It doesn’t help either that Young’s a still relatively raw player who turns 25 next week.
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Experts have…
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