How Jaguars are Coaxing a Career Year out of Devin Lloyd

Devin Lloyd has fully arrived

Due to his debatable impact in his first three seasons, the Jacksonville Jaguars elected not to pick up the fifth-year option on Devin Lloyd's rookie contract, making him a free agent at the end of the league year. They'll likely regret that decision by the offseason.

He's fully broken out in his fourth year, currently leading the NFL with three interceptions to go along with a fumble recovery, three passes defended, and 23 combined tackles in four games. Many have credited Defensive Coordinator Anthony Campanile for unlocking his linebacker. Jacksonville media asked Campanile what he saw in Lloyd that other coaches may not have:

"I don't know so much what I saw. I just think that he is a great fit for what we do. To me, he's just a true three-down linebacker. There's just not that many three-down linebackers in football, and some guys are three-down linebackers in a certain way, and some are three-down linebackers in another way. Meaning that some guys may be out there and hey they do a bunch of stuff in the coverage, they're kind of a lighter guy and they're off the ball, off the ball all the time, but he's a guy — I've said this about him in the past — that has a very unique skill set in that he could play on the edge early down.

If you lined him up outside as an open five-technique on a tackle or a nine-technique on a tight end, he can do a really good job there, setting the edge, zone drop, and all that stuff. He can play off the ball early down because he sees it pretty good. He can run and hit. He does a good job in the pass coverage, and then if you want to use him as a pass rusher, he has the ability to do that.

So, I don't think there's that many guys that have that unique skillset where they're a three-down guy. Like I said, he's able to cover, he's able to rush, blitz and he's able to set the edge early down, play off the ball. So that's a multiple skill set, and I've said that in the past here too, that's what we really value in players, and he definitely has that. And he's worked so hard, that guy. Just everything that he does fundamentally every day is showing up in the games, and he really has done a great job building up a lot of that in his skillset over the course of the last few months.”