Quote:Nominally, if you asked people which of these passers was the closest to looking like a franchise quarterback, Lawrence would be the most common answer. It's fair to write off last season as an Urban Meyer-riddled fever dream. And at his best, Lawrence looks like the total package. Nobody else in this class has his combination of arm strength, physical tools and pocket presence.
And yet, when you account for the lofty expectations surrounding Lawrence as arguably the best college quarterback prospect since Andrew Luck in 2012, I'm not sure he is any closer to what he was supposed to be than the other guys on this list. The strides he was supposed to take with a better coach and a revamped receiving corps haven't come this season, and it has cost the Jaguars games.

Jacksonville has lost five straight after a 2-1 start. Lawrence looked solid to begin the season, but he has not been on the right side of the ledger for the Jaguars during this slide. His minus-9.3% completion percentage over expectation (CPOE) over that stretch is the second worst in the league, behind only Baker Mayfield's. His accuracy isn't where it should be.
Drops have played a meaningful role, since Jacksonville's receivers have dropped nearly 7% of his passes during the losing streak, but they don't explain the whole story. More than 21% of Lawrence's passes over the past five games have been off-target, the third-worst mark in football. ESPN's adjusted completion percentage metric accounts for drops and the depth of each pass; the only starters with a less impressive adjusted completion percentage over the past five weeks are Marcus Mariota and Justin Fields.
It would be easy to imagine a scenario in which Lawrence was making mistakes under pressure, or the offense wasn't giving him the solutions he wants, and those things do happen at times. In reality, though, these problems are popping up in comfortable situations. When he has been unpressured over the past five games, he ranks 27th in QBR, 32nd in CPOE and 31st in off-target rate.

All of this would be forgivable if it weren't for what Lawrence has done in the red zone. No quarterback has hurt his team's chances more significantly inside the 20 this season. The Jacksonville offense ranks sixth in the NFL in expected points added (EPA) per play outside of the red zone, but once it gets inside the 20, it drops all the way to 30th in the same category.
Lawrence has thrown three red zone interceptions over that stretch, including one against the Broncos in London on Sunday. No other quarterback has more than one red zone pick over that stretch. Each pass has been a terrible decision, with throws into windows on the sideline that simply did not exist. Lawrence's picks against the Texans and Broncos were both similar, as they came on sprint-outs in which he didn't have anywhere to put the football and threw it anyway. To do that on first-and-goal from the 1-yard line -- as Lawrence did Sunday -- is just egregious.
Lawrence has 14 incompletions over the past five games on passes that had an expected completion percentage of 80% or more, per NFL Next Gen Stats. Some of these are drops (most notably in the Texans game), but many of them are just poorly placed passes on throws at or around the line of scrimmage. Only one came Sunday, a screen to JaMycal Hasty that seemed set to turn into a big play, only for the pass to be overthrown in the process of the Broncos reacting to the screen.

Is it fair to worry whether this is going to continue to be a concern for Lawrence? While he was an elite quarterback prospect by just about any measure, accuracy wasn't his strongest suit at Clemson. By the same adjusted completion percentage metric, he ranked 27th in the nation between 2018 and 2020; good, certainly, but behind such passers as Fields, Zach Wilson and Jalen Hurts. The Jaguars have players who can create after the catch, so Lawrence is leaving opportunities on the table by missing these short throws.
The good news for the Jags, at least relative to the competition, is that Lawrence had the best stretch of the season for any of these second-year quarterbacks. Over that 2-1 start, his 72.9 QBR was the league's sixth-best mark. He completed more than 69% of his passes, posted a positive CPOE and tossed six touchdown passes against one pick. Any of the teams with the passers on this list would trade away a draft pick next week if they could guarantee that sort of three-game stretch from their quarterback in the weeks to come.

Relative to these other passers, exhibiting some semblance of a professional ceiling is a promising sign for Lawrence. Compared to his pre-draft expectations, though, he is still struggling to match up. It's too early to drastically recalibrate what we think he is capable of doing at the NFL level, but for a signal-caller who seemed to be a plug-and-play superstar by the end of his freshman season at Clemson, he clearly is further from stardom than it seemed.