Jaguars to take ‘big picture’ approach at quarterback

The Jacksonville Jaguars are going to be making a change at quarterback this offseason, but the big question is how? Will they decide to commit to a free agent veteran like Nick Foles? Will they decide to bank everything on a rookie like Dwayne Haskins or Kyler Murray, maybe a combination of both?

“We had some of these meetings before we came here. What we do is we evaluate the veterans separately. We evaluate the draft prospects and then we go through the discussions of ranking them – putting them all into order,” Caldwell said when asked how they evaluation between vet and rookie. “Veteran, rookie, veteran, rookie – who would you prefer to have? Who are you excited about working with on a daily basis?”

Jaguars general manager was asked about the franchise’s plan going forward at the position at the 2019 NFL Combine, will it be a vet or a rookie, and he mentioned they’ll take a look at the big picture.

“We’re taking a big picture approach to this. The goal is to put the best team on the field. Obviously, the quarterback is a key part of that, but we have to make sure we have the best team – we have the best offense, the best defense,” Caldwell said when asked about the team’s approach. “The quarterback will slide in place when it is time for that player to come in place. It may not be till the draft, it may be through free agency, but when that time comes, we want to make sure we have the best team offensively and defensively around that position.”

As mentioned, the biggest thing to go with the quarterback is the Jaguars are also going to need to add players on the offensive side of the ball. Even if the team commits to say Nick Foles in free agency, just slotting him into their current offensive group isn’t going to net massive improvement.

On the flip side with the rookies, Caldwell seems to think there are good quarterbacks at the top and the class as a whole as solid quantity of players at the position.

“I think you can get a good quarterback obviously in the first round and not only that, but I think there is a good quantity of quarterbacks, too,” Caldwell said. “The quality is good, but the quantity of guys that have won, the guys that have been productive, the guys with high completion percentage that can come in and do it. You are seeing other teams in the past where they take a position player early in the draft and they come back in the second round and take a quarterback and that has worked out for them.”

What that tells me is there are probably one or two guys worth an early first round pick with the rest being a bunch of “potential” type of players on Day 2 and Day 3 of the 2019 NFL Draft.