With the rest of the AFC South in various stages of rebuilding, the Jacksonville Jaguars are the favorites to win the division for the second straight year. The sky appears to be the limit on the offensive side of the ball, where Trevor Lawrence will enter his second season in Doug Pederson’s system while throwing to a new wide receiver in Calvin Ridley.
But if the Jaguars are to compete with the Chiefs, Bills, and Bengals in a crowded AFC playoff picture, they’ll have to show clear improvement on the defensive side. And that starts with their two first-round picks from the 2022 NFL Draft: Travon Walker and Devin Lloyd.
The Jaguars Need Second-Year Leaps From Travon Walker and Devin Lloyd
NFL players often make tremendous progress between their first and second professional seasons, and it’s usually not by happenstance. As former NFL defensive back Matt Bowen wrote for Bleacher Report, players coming off their rookie campaigns often use their first NFL offseasons to enhance their football-specific conditioning, work on position-specific techniques, and perform self-scouting.
Walker was the No. 1 overall pick in last year’s draft, which generally means the Jaguars should expect him to become a perennial Pro Bowler, if not All-Pro. Jacksonville selected Walker primarily based on his traits — he was the third-most athletic defensive end in the history of Kent Lee Platte’s RAS database — rather than his production profile after he generated just 13.5 sacks over three seasons at Georgia.
In his first season with the Jaguars, Walker showed alignment versatility and contributed to a Jacksonville rushing defense that held up for most of the year. But he managed just 3.5 sacks and 10 QB hits as a pass rusher and ranked 86th among qualifying edge defenders with an 11.4% pass-rush win rate, per PFF.
The Jaguars finished fourth in pressure rate in 2022 but often failed to get home and ranked just 26th in the league with 35 sacks. This offseason, Jacksonville lost both Arden Key and Dawuane Smoot, each of whom played 400+ snaps and rushed the passer at least 299 times last year (Key signed with the Titans, while Smoot remains a free agent).
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Jacksonville was too cap-strapped to add any veteran edge-rushing talent. In the draft, they waited until the fifth round to select Yasir Abdullah, an undersized pass rusher who will probably see most of his action on special teams during his rookie season.
Walker and fifth-year pro Josh Allen are at the center of the Jaguars’ 2023 pass-rushing plans. Pederson believes Walker is ready to take a step forward.
“Just like Trevor, we can only go up, right?” Pederson said in March. “He can be a really dominant impact player for us, and this will be a good plus: He’ll have an offseason to kind of rest, too. This time last year, he was going with (draft) visits and the (Scouting) Combine. Now he’s had a chance to kind of recover, heal, get back in the weight room, and start working on his craft.
“… One of the things I appreciated with Travon is how he improved,” Pederson added. “Some of these young guys don’t know how to study the game as well. Being able to show him how to study, what to look for, who to study — great edge rushers in our game, to try to take some takeaways from that. And again, there’s so much room for improvement with him.”
Walker, who spent most of his time along the defensive interior at Georgia, called his rookie season a “growing year” and said he wants to keep playing a positional-versatile role in 2023. The Jaguars will need Walker to deliver on his draft billing next season, or they could begin hearing complaints about selecting him over No. 2 pick Aidan Hutchinson, who put up 9.5 sacks for the Lions last year.
Lloyd Is the Key to the Middle of the Jaguars’ Defense
Walker isn’t the only 2022 first-round pick the Jaguars will need to see more out of next season. Last year, Jacksonville traded back into the first round to grab Lloyd, who was almost universally regarded as the class’ best linebacker but was ultimately selected five picks after Georgia’s Quay Walker.
Lloyd had a far more up-and-down season than Walker. The Utah alum looked like the favorite for Defensive Rookie of the Year honors at the quarter-season mark, but he struggled for much of the remaining year.
Lloyd was eventually benched in favor of fellow rookie Chad Muma in the second half of the Jaguars’ game against the Chiefs in Week 10, but he soon won back his role and finished the campaign in the starting lineup.
Lloyd was inconsistent against the run, but his real problems came against the pass. Opposing quarterbacks targeted him relentlessly in coverage. In three games, Lloyd was targeted at least nine times, including Week 6 when Matt Ryan peppered him with 12 targets, completing 11 for 108 yards and a touchdown.
In 2022, 51 linebackers saw at least 40 targets in their coverage area. Lloyd allowed the fourth-most total completions (61), eighth-most yards per completion (10.5), and the sixth-most yards per target (8.2). To top it all off, he posted the third-highest miss tackle rate among all NFL LBs.
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Lloyd has the physical ability and instincts to become one of the best second-level players in the league. He proved that during his excellent early-season stretch, and it’s possible he hit a “rookie wall” as the year progressed. Still, Pederson believes Lloyd has the capacity to rebound heading into 2023.
“You saw flashes of it early,” Pederson said in January. “Had a little bit of a low there. It’s different — in college, he was an outside ‘backer type. On-the-ball linebacker, where we’re asking him to play off the ball, it’s a different game.”
Veteran Foyesade Oluokun is a locked-in starting LB, meaning there’s only room for one of Lloyd or Muma to see significant snaps in nickel packages. Lloyd’s draft capital will give him the inherent advantage.
If he can harness his athletic skills and make flash plays as a coverage defender and pass rusher, Lloyd can deliver immense value for the Jaguars. If both Lloyd and Walker can develop and shine alongside Allen and star cornerback Tyson Campbell, Jacksonville’s defense could morph from one of the league’s worst into a top-10 unit.