So since Khan has been an owner, the results haven't been spectacular. The drafts have been disasters with the exception of 2016 and an occasional bright spot here and there. I've often felt that whoever is making the picks for the Jags usually gets too cute about it and we leave solid players on the board chasing homeruns and upside at the cost of production and a winning pedigree. The other adage i've often heard from whoever is in charge at the top, is that they "Want to build a winning culture in Jacksonville" so I thought, what better way to build a culture than to get guys who played in the winningest cultures at the college level. Thus my premise of if the GM hired post Mularkey/Gene Smith regime took the below approach to the draft, where would we be:

If the Jaguars from 2013 to Present had only drafted players that played in the National Championship game with their early picks (rounds 1-3 mostly) here's who would have been available at each of the Jaguars picks during that timeframe to build a team; I took the top 2-3 players that were drafted after the Jaguars selections at each spot that fit the criteria, here's who would have been available at each pick in hindsight:

2013- 1st - OT DJ Fluker; OG Chance Warmack
         2nd - LB Manti Te'o; RB Eddie Lacy
         3rd - LB Nico Johnson 

2014 - 1st - OG Zack Martin; LB CJ Mosely
          2nd - OT Cyrus K; DE Stephon Tuitt
          3rd - RB Devonta Freeman; LB Telvin Smith

2015 - 1st - WR Amari Cooper
          2nd - RB TJ Yeldon
          3rd - CB PJ Williams


2016 - 1st - CB Jalen Ramsey; OT Ronnie Stanley
          2nd - LB Reggie Ragland; RB Derrick Henry; WR Michael Thomas
          3rd - TE Nick Vanett


2017 - 1st - WR Mike Williams; CB Marlon Humphrey; CB Marshon Lattimore
          2nd - OT Cam Robinson; WR Curtis Samuel; RB Dalvin Cook
          3rd - C Pat Elflein


2018 - 1st - **QB Lamar Jackson (not a NC game player; exception made for him being a Heisman trophy winner and because passing on a QB/sticking with Bortles just to select Taven Bryan was just mind bogglingly dumb)
          2nd - DE Sam Hubbard; LB Jerome Baker
          3rd - S Ronnie Harrison


2019 - 1st - OT Jonah Williams
          2nd - CB Trayvon Mullen; TE Irv Smith Jr.
          3rd - CB Jamel Dean; RB Damien Harris

2020 - 1st - OT Jedrick Wills; WR Jerry Jeudy; LB K'Lavon Chaisson (2nd first rounder)
          2nd - S Grant Delpit
          3rd - DT Davon Hamilton


2021 - 1st - QB Trevor Lawrence; RB Travis Etienne (2nd first rounder)
          2nd - DT Christian Barmore
          3rd - WR Amari Rodgers



At a glance .... that's decisively more nfl talent, probowl talent, all-pro talent, and just players who are better at football than the players we drafted at those spots. Hindsight is 20/20, maybe we wouldn't have been drafting in the same spots if we kept adding talent like that etc. It just feels so damn simple.... logic says that players that are on teams that are good enough to make a national championship are pretty good. With only a few exceptions (Yannick Ngakoue in the 3rd round in 2016 over Nick Vanett for example) I would almost always rather have one the players in the above criteria, especially with the benefit of hindsight as a good portion are marquee players in the league; furthermore a lot of the good players we've actually drafted in this timeframe were players who fit this criteria (Jalen Ramsey, Telvin Smith, etc.) 

The other thing that stuck out to me was how often the players that fit the "NC game experience" players that were available in those early rounds at are picks were at premium positions: OL, DL, CB, WR, RB and the occasional TE, LB or S. It just felt like naturally over the course of time every position of need would/could be filled by a high pedigree guy who played college football at the highest level (national championship). 

On paper this collection of talent on a depth chart lined side by side with some of our recent rosters .... we'd get eclipsed almost universally across the board. Now I'm not saying that drafting only players with NC game experience in rounds 1-3 is the best strategy, but it's just shocking to me that it would yield such drastically better results than what we did each of these years.

---