You won’t like Jacksonville’s placement in the Touchdown Wire power rankings

After a long, long wait, the 2021 NFL season is finally upon us. The preseason kicked off in Canton, Ohio, Thursday night for the Hall of Fame Game, in which the Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Dallas Cowboys 16-3. The rest of the league’s teams begin play in the preseason next Thursday, and Jaguars fans won’t have to wait too much longer to see rookie quarterback Trevor Lawrence in live game action for the first time.

With the season just about to start, Touchdown Wire’s Doug Farrar updated his NFL power rankings, and though he doesn’t predict that the Jags will be the worst team in football once again, he expects the most marginal amount of improvement.

Farrar ranks the Jaguars 31st in the league, ahead of only the Houston Texans, who are openly shopping star quarterback Deshaun Watson (whose status in the wake of 22 lawsuits alleging inappropriate behavior on his part is still unclear). Here’s Farrar’s justification for the placement.

There’s a lot of new blood in Jacksonville, but we’ll have to wait and see how it plays out. Urban Meyer is greatly respected in the NFL, but there are all kinds of pro-respected college coaches who couldn’t handle the rigors of the league when they became a part of it. Quarterback Trevor Lawrence looks like a sure thing, but we’ve seen sure things go south before. The first-round selection of running back Travis Etienne was pretty weird, especially when it seemed as if Etienne’s new coaching staff didn’t seem to have an absolute plan for him. A defense that ranked 31st in Football Outsiders’ opponent-adjusted metrics was buttressed to a point with the free-agency additions of former Seahawks cornerback Shaquil Griffin and ex-Chargers safety Rayshawn Jenkins (a sneaky-good signing, if you ask us), but if we’re assuming an immediate massive upgrade over last year’s 1-15 mark, we may be left wanting at first.

It’s understandable why Farrar is taking a “wait and see” approach with the Jaguars. Saying that first-time NFL coaches have a questionable track record is an understatement, and we’ve certainly seen quarterbacks of Lawrence’s caliber struggle before.

Still, this is a Jacksonville team that improved all over the field, not just at quarterback. Even if Lawrence’s development is a slower burn than some on staff would like to see, the team should still be much deeper and talented at the top than it was last season.

Expecting the Jags to compete for the playoffs in Year 1 under the new regime is probably a bit of a stretch, but they should have the talent to improve considerably on their one-win finish from a year ago, especially in a division where three of the four teams have major question marks.