Quote:Great draft yes, best draft ever now.... remember Fred Taylor and Double D....that was IMO the best draft ever.

 

It's debatable.  Keep in mind that we had two first round picks (#9 and #25).  It's easier to find two impact players when you have two first rounders with one of them being a top 10 pick.  Most of the rest of the draft wasn't great, although it did include John Wade (a long time starter at center) in the 5th round.  However, we mostly missed on our other picks.  Harry Deligianis is our worst 4th rounder ever.  He didn't even make the first round of cuts with the Jaguars and never got picked up elsewhere -- even after mid-season injuries occurred.  Cordell Taylor also gave us the least production of any 2nd rounder, although it's unclear whether that was due to injury.  We kept Jonathan Quinn as a backup even though he was terrible.  Despite extra picks in the fourth, sixth, and seventh rounds, we got virtually no depth.    

 

Best draft is tough for a number of reasons.  First, most drafts are a mix of good and bad.  Second, it depends upon the criteria.  If you include the impact of trades, I think a great case can be made for the 1995 draft.  Keep in mind that it was drafting Rob Johnson in 4th round that allowed the trade for the #9 overall pick in 1998 that got us Fred Taylor.  Coughlin also traded a 3rd and a 5th rounder for Mark Brunell.  We also selected Boselli with the first round pick.  As a result, all three Pride of the Jaguars players (Boselli, Taylor, and Brunell) were all ultimately acquired as a result of Coughlin use of his 1995 draft picks.  We also had four other picks who were full time starters (James Stewart, Brian DeMarco, Bryan Schwartz and Chris Hudson), although they didn't last long.  (To be fair, TMD makes a good point too in that we had two picks in each round.  That is definitely an incredible help.)

 

Some would argue for 1996 too.  We had three pro-bowlers -- Hardy, Brackens, and Barlow (as a returner).  We also got a decent starting cornerback in Beasley.  Cheever also appeared to be on his way to being an excellent center, although his career ended early due to injury before ever knowing for sure.  The negative is that we also had two picks in each round (outside of the first) so you should have high expectations.  We also completely missed with all of our picks in the second half of the draft.  It was a complete failure to get depth.

 

I was just looking through our other drafts.  Considering what we had to work with, 2006 actually wasn't bad.  We only had six picks and that included two seventh rounders.  We had no 4th or 6th rounders.  We were also picking 28th in each round.  Despite that, we got two pro-bowlers (Marcedes Lewis and MJD).  Ingram was also a four year starter for us.  

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