We’re just weeks away now from our first glance at an entirely different football team. Seven months of speculation and guessing will finally give way to actual evidence of new head coach Urban Meyer’s grand scheme to build a better football team. Regardless of opinion on Meyer’s lack of professional experience or Tim Tebow’s ability to transition to tight end there is only one story that Jaguars fans need focus on, and that’s Trevor Lawrence.
Lost in all the hoopla around one of college football’s best coaches and Jacksonville’s favorite sons is the understanding that it’s the quarterback that makes the coach and not the other way around. Don’t forget that Bill Belichick was 13-19 as the Patriots’ head coach going into the final weeks of the 2001 season when Drew Bledsoe went down with an injury and Tom Brady strode off the bench in relief. Twenty years and six Super Bowl championships later, Belichick is among the greatest coaches of all time, and he is a great coach. But what if Brady was in New York or Chicago instead of the famously forgotten sixth round, compensatory pick from the 2000 NFL Draft watching from the sidelines in New England?
Lawrence has the look of a quarterback who could send his coach to the Hall of Fame also. Watching him figure things out on the practice field during OTA’s in May and June was to see a young man, who is not only a great player and student of the game, but a guy who obviously loves what he does. You don’t need to read anything else about a player you’ve probably watched since his now-famous NCAA Championship game against Alabama; the kid is a great football player.
I don’t have any doubt, and I’ve never said that about a football player in nearly three decades covering the NFL, that he’s going to be a superstar signal caller. What I’m anxious to learn about Lawrence is if he is a competitor on the level of Brady, Peyton Manning and Drew Brees. Those three epitomized what it meant to be at the top of the game since the early 2000s. They each saw the other two prepare on and off the field and found a way to take the film room or a nutritional plan to an entirely different level. They were great leaders in the huddle but could be cruel competitors amongst their own teammates with guys who made silly mistakes or weren’t available for extra work after practice or in the offseason. Those three — with a combined 10 Super Bowl rings — re-wrote the record books and captivated the football world for more than 20 years.
If Lawrence, who seems to be as good a person as he is a player, can sharpen that edge against guys like Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson and Justin Herbert, and prepare to push his teammates hard — really, really hard — then Meyer is going to be a wildly successful head coach. And, from my viewpoint, he had to know what was possible with the pride of Cartersville, Georgia, and Clemson, South Carolina, before Meyer left a great job in television and his championship legacy in college football for a franchise in distress in North Florida. Lawrence will decide how good a professional coach Meyer will be and not the other way around. That’s how it works in the NFL.
Brian Sexton is the senior correspondent for the Jacksonville Jaguars and has served more than 20 years as the voice of Jacksonville’s NFL franchise.
