Jaguars Should Have Helped Maurice Jones-Drew in 2008 Redraft

It's truly unfortunate that most young football fans do not understand the level of talent that Jaguars had from the golden years with Tom Coughlin all the way through the Jack Del Rio era.

For an expansion franchise, those years were defined by roster moves that made the Jaguars good but there was always a miss that prevented them from being great.

In Pro Football Focus' re-draft of the 2008 selection process by Max Chadwick, Dalton Wasserman and Trevor Sikkema, we look back at the last draft conducted by James "Shack" Harris and how his moves prevented the Jaguars from being successful going into the 2010s.

Following the 2007 season, the Jaguars were rolling. The team had an 11-5 record, a premier quarterback in David Gerrard, the best running back tandem in the NFL with Fred Taylor and Maurice Jones-Drew with both men combining for nearly 2,000 rushing yards, and a team the defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers on the road in the playoffs.

A strong first round pick could propel them to the Super Bowl so they threw caution into the wind, trading picks 26, 71, 89, 125 to Baltimore for pick number eight to select defensive end Derrick Harvey out of the University of Florida.

Harvey was supposed to be the exterior pressure while big John Henderson dominated from the inside.

Harvey, after breaking the record for longest rookie holdout in franchise history, became a bust, never achieving more than four sacks in a season, playing only three years of his five year deal before being waived. He played five games with the Broncos in 2011 and was out of the NFL before his rookie deal was set to expire.

Using PFF's tools, they relisted the players that the Jaguars should have taken are certin picks and the results are depressing. If they traded up to eight, the franchise would've selected Jake Long.

"The original first-overall pick in this class," wrote PFF. "Jake Long doesn’t fall too far down the board in this redraft. Before injuries foiled his chance to be a potential Hall of Famer, Long was one of the best tackles in the NFL."

"From 2008 to 2013, he earned a 91.7 PFF overall grade, ranking seventh among all offensive tackles in that span. He was one of just four tackles during that time to post at least an 85.0 PFF grade as a run blocker and a pass protector."

To be fair, Long was the first pick in the draft so it makes sense why it didn't happen. However, had the Jaguars stayed at pick 26, the formula states the Jaguars would have drafted John Sullivan, a center who was a dominant force from 2008-2018.

The orinial selection was Duane Brown, another longtime NFL veteran. Considering injuries and a shooting decimated the Jaguars offensive line in 2008, had they had this information, perhaps things could have been different.

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