The Jaguars either have their eyes on a player that they know they want with the second overall pick on Thursday night or General Manager David Caldwell is trying to drum up a strong offer to trade out of that slot.
Those are the two sensible conclusions to draw from Caldwell saying Monday, via Ryan O’Halloran of the Florida Times-Union, that he would be surprised if the Jaguars traded down in the first round. Caldwell also said that the team has finished its internal discussions about who to take with the second pick, which suggests that there’s a pretty clear plan in place in Jacksonville about how to approach the draft this week.
If the Jags do sit at the second spot, they’ll obviously have plenty of ways to go with the pick. They could take an offensive tackle (Luke Joeckel and/or Eric Fisher could be there), an edge rusher (Dion Jordan and Ziggy Ansah’s names have come up in connection with the Jags) or even quarterback Geno Smith if they were blown away by him during the scouting process.
Caldwell also voiced a couple of big differences from his predecessor Gene Smith. He expressed a general preference for players from big schools, something Smith certainly didn’t have, and said that 10-12 players had been struck from the board because of character concerns. Smith was big on “character” guys, stressing it every year when the time for the draft rolled around.