Gene Frenette: Any hope of bright future for Jaguars starts with a home-run NFL draft

The primary architects for yet another Jaguars’ rebuild are on the clock.

General manager Dave Caldwell and coach Doug Marrone no longer have front-office czar Tom Coughlin looking over their shoulder, but the urgency to restore a franchise to respectability is more intense than ever. Starting Thursday night, it’s not going to happen without maybe the best 48 hours in the Jaguars’ NFL draft history.

Caldwell and Marrone have a team-record dozen picks — potentially more if they add to their draft capital via trades — to bolster what is likely going to be the youngest and, as of now, the most talent-depleted roster in the league.

Any chance the Jaguars have to elevate themselves out of the AFC South cellar, their place of occupancy the past two seasons, would require a lot going right in this draft and quarterback Gardner Minshew taking a significant jump on his learning curve.

A more realistic outlook is the Jaguars will have to go through some long Sunday afternoon next season — likely be drafting in the top-10 again (maybe top 3?) in 2021 — as part of the process toward becoming a relevant franchise.

Can this fan base stand to endure another year where four, five or six wins might be the ceiling? The answer is yes, providing this draft with the Jaguars holding the No. 9 and No. 20 overall selections in the first round yields a promising crop of players who eventually make the job of Minshew or another franchise quarterback easier to navigate.

If Caldwell and Marrone hope to return in 2021 to serve out the final year of their contracts, the Jaguars have to make a lot of right decisions between 9 p.m. Thursday and Saturday afternoon. That means this can’t be a draft of hit-miss-miss-miss-hit-miss-miss like so many previous years.

With four first-round picks over the next two years, half of which was secured by the Jalen Ramsey trade, the Jaguars have the ammunition to lay a great foundation for the long-term future, though someone else besides Caldwell and Marrone may be the beneficiaries.

But for right now, this GM and head coach are entrusted to collaborate and make the right draft calls. There’s a minimum four position options — defensive line, offensive tackle, receiver, cornerback — the Jaguars could go with their first three picks, including No. 42 overall in the second round. It’d be a bombshell if quarterback Tua Tagovailoa or Justin Herbert were available with the ninth pick and the Jaguars pulled the trigger.

Caldwell needs a repeat of something like 2016 when he plucked Ramsey, Myles Jack and Yannick Ngakoue with his first three picks. Remember, it didn’t pay immediate dividends as the Jaguars went 3-13 with that trio making a combined 41 starts as rookies. But then the team jumped to 10-6 and an AFC title berth in 2017, with those same players having their best years.

That’s the kind of draft bounty the Jaguars desperately need again. With glaring holes at multiple positions, any miscalculation in the top three rounds is one too much.

By trading away veterans Calais Campbell, A.J. Bouye and Nick Foles — with Leonard Fournette and Ngakoue possibly in the on-deck circle — the Jaguars sent a clear signal about rebuilding. Strange as that seems, given owner Shad Khan delivering a loosely defined win-now edict to Caldwell and Marrone, that’s where things stand.

The dilemma is it’s a big ask for any team to start winning when most of the roster has so little experience. At this moment, 39 of the 62 players on the Jaguars’ roster will be 25 or younger when the season begins. Then you add 28 more drafted and undrafted rookies over the next four days, it means the Jaguars will be asking the 25-year-old Minshew to win with nearly 75 percent of the roster being as young as he is.

That’s all the context you need to understand how pivotal this draft is to the Jaguars’ long-term future. This franchise will be hard pressed to be relevant in 2021 and beyond without some big-time reinforcements to go with foundational pieces like Josh Allen, DJ Chark, Jawaan Taylor, Jack and free-agent acquisition Joe Schobert.

Who are those new pieces? Well, for starters, it better include some big bodies early in the draft because the Jaguars were either pitiful or mediocre in 2019 at the line of scrimmage. As much as this team needs a playmaking receiver and a shutdown cornerback, it’s a lot harder to get quality behemoths by waiting after the first round to pick them.

The chances of the Jaguars getting lucky again, as they did with Allen at No. 7 last year, and having a player the caliber of Auburn defensive tackle Derrick Brown fall to them at No. 9 are remote. The same goes for cornerback Jeff Okudah, the one non-lineman I’d consider taking over Brown or offensive tackles Andrew Thomas, Jedrick Wills Jr., Tristan Wirfs and Mekhi Becton.

If the Jaguars feel they can get a player they covet in the 13-15 range, then trading down and picking up a mid-round pick might not be a bad idea either. The Jaguars need a minimum three immediate starters out of this draft, and ultimately five or six, if they hope to be a consistent playoff contender.

No matter what Khan has said, this isn’t about realistically winning in the 2020 season. Not with this roster. Not with a tougher schedule than last year that includes seven playoff opponents (five on the road). This is about the 2020 draft being a launching pad for the Jaguars to be an AFC South champion or playoff fixture in future years.

Another first-round whiff like Taven Bryan, Luke Joeckel, Derrick Harvey, Justin Blackmon or Reggie Williams would be disastrous.

The Jaguars’ future hope starts now. Tick, tick, tick. . . .

gfrenette@jacksonville.com; (904) 359-4540