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.

---

Hind sight is always 20/20.

---

Appreciate your efforts on this but I quit reading when I saw Mante Te'o in the 2nd round.

---

Appreciate your efforts on this but I quit reading when I saw Mante Te'o in the 2nd round.

I had forgotten all about Mr. Overhype and his imaginary dying girlfriend.

---

I don’t know how much I can disagree. Thank you for putting this together, I’m sure it took a fair amount of time.

A good lesson in “not overthinking it.”

---

Interesting to see several of the same picks are there, and interesting that several more would have proven better than what we ended up with.

It's certainly not the worst draft strategy out there.

---

Sure seems you would have solved key positions and opened up better choices down the line.

---

The Khan Years

Patience, Persistence, and Piss Poor General Managers.

A part of me is curious about the same analysis done with the Gene Smith small school philosophy.

---

Hindsight is always 20/20, though it could be argued that had we drafted player “X” our draft position wouldn’t have been the same in each year.

Additional question, why so many running backs? Certainly at a certain point there would have been a needs over value selection instead of repeat top round RBs.

Interesting, nonetheless

---

Hindsight is always 20/20, though it could be argued that had we drafted player “X” our draft position wouldn’t have been the same in each year.

Additional question, why so many running backs? At a certain point there would have been a needs over value selection instead of repeat top round RBs.

Interesting, nonetheless

---

I'm considering making this a recurring analysis, before each draft I can put together a list of the players that fit the criteria and their availability at each pick. Then we can track over the next few seasons how our selections fare in comparison, it would remove the "hindsight is 20/20" aspect of it.

My guess on the RB's is that they tend to fall a little bit due to positional value, and in college football dominant runninggames usually carry these teams to title games. Considering the shelf life of RB's I think it makes sense to just keep drafting them, burning the tires off and then drafting a replacement rather than re-signing a declining asset with wear and tear.

another aspect of this that may not be obvious at first, is that if you build a team of all national championship participants 3 things will happen:

1) you'll naturally create internal competition as there are rivalries and intensity in those games between the 2 teams you can pick from, each practice they can remind each other of "remember when i did X to you in the NC?!?"
2) they'll begin to recruit the other players they played with in college that are thriving elsewhere in the NFL. If you have a good portion of 'Bama guys, Clemson guys etc. assuming the money is about equal it may be more enticing to go to the destination that has a large number of your friends and former teammates that you already have a good rapport with and may have onfield chemistry with.
3) You'll almost certainly create a winning culture, or at least a better culture that rejects apathy and accepts losing, if every guy wins at the college level as they come in, in theory it should be easier to get everyone to buy into a similar culture at this level.

---

A part of me is curious about the same analysis done with the Gene Smith small school philosophy.

If I have time I might be able to throw something like that together; i'm actually a little curious to see how that would shake out thanks for the idea!

---

Championship Formula:

1) Draft Trevor Lawrence!
2) Play good physical Defense! 
3) Keep 91% of the roster healthy!
4) ???
5) Blank #2
6) CHAMPIONSHIP!!!

Nice thread and thanks for the work involved. It is a nice new stone to kick around as an alternative to being beat down by this franchise. Their is some merit to this approach.

---

The Khan Years

Patience, Persistence, and Piss Poor General Managers.