Did Derrick Henry kill the Jacksonville Jaguars franchise?

Huge draft miss

The Jaguars had gotten to the playoffs on the back of their pass defense, and decided that Blake Bortles was good enough to repeat what he did in 2017.

Remember that decision, it will be important later.

To support Bortles, the Jaguars decided to make a huge move in free agency and sign Andrew Norwell, the biggest free agent to hit the guard market since Andy Levitre (insert foreshadowing joke here).

The rest of the offseason was pretty vanilla, but the draft was a mystery. Matt Miller was projecting an offensive lineman, Mike Mayock was projecting a tight end, but no one thought that the pick they ended up making was bad.

For some reason, a mediocre career at Florida and some solid athletic testing had analysts fawning over future Jacksonville backup defensive lineman Taven Bryan. McShay called it the best pick of a great Jags draft class:

"Jacksonville did a great job getting value from all four of its picks in Rounds 1-4, but Bryan was No. 21 on my board. When teams prioritize the best player available over need, it generally works — and this is another example. Jacksonville has an elite defense (especially its defensive line), but we just saw in Philadelphia how valuable a deep D-line rotation can be over the course of a season. Bryan has elite first-step quickness and outstanding short-area explosiveness. He needs some refinement, but he will create disruption for offenses while he learns better technique. A strength for Jacksonville becomes stronger."

It never made sense to me to roll the dice on Blake Bortles again for a player that was never even that good

Now, when you pick 29 you really don’t have a lot of options to land a great QB…except…the Jaguars did and it was a player that everyone thought was worth a roll of the dice for a team that was stacked at other positions.

That was Lamar Jackson, I wonder whatever happened to that guy…

Now…why do you think a team that got swept by the Tennessee Titans because of an inability to stop Derrick Henry, would choose to invest another premium pick in a front seven player despite clear needs on offense and good players on the board? I wonder…