JACKSONVILLE, FLA. — It might be too much to ask of one man to save a team, especially one just 21 years of age. But in the United States the influence of winning athletes cannot be overstated, and no one wins quite like Trevor Lawrence.
The 2021 NFL Draft looms large for the Jacksonville Jaguars.
In the 27th year of marriage between the city and the team, neither party feels particularly fulfilled: The Jaguars are not winners, and Jacksonville is not the destination city it has for so long aspired to be.
The franchise’s lease expires in 2030, and rumors abound that the team could put down roots elsewhere — maybe even in London, where owner Shad Khan has strong ties.
Sports Mania in Jacksonville Beach is already selling Lawrence T-Shirts. Joshua Needelman/Staff
There is no balm, however, like winning, and a cavalry is coming. On Jan. 14 the Jaguars hired Urban Meyer, the former Florida and Ohio State coach with three national championships, and on April 29 the team has the No. 1 overall pick in the NFL Draft.
There is no doubt who the franchise will select. Lawrence is coming to Jacksonville.
That the Clemson superstar would be the first selection in this draft has felt preordained since Jan. 7, 2019, when the then-freshman carved up Alabama in the Tigers’ 44-16 national championship win in California. The sports media machine did the rest: Here was the second coming of Peyton Manning.
Lawrence’s celebrity only grew over the next two seasons. That he continued to win helped. So did his hair – long, blond and flowing from his helmet – a reminder of his humanity in an otherwise impersonal, brutal game. In 2020 Lawrence was named ACC Player of the Year and finished second in the Heisman Trophy voting, but he also won hearts for standing up for racial justice and player empowerment.
Jacksonville, which is just 25 miles south of the Georgia state line, was the 41st largest media market in the nation in 2020, per Nielsen: Bigger than the likes of Oklahoma City and Louisville but smaller than Tampa, Miami, Orlando and West Palm Beach.
Jaguars owner Shad Khan, the Pakistani-born billionaire who also owns the London-based soccer team Fulham FC of the Premier League, is bent on redeveloping Jacksonville’s sleepy downtown area and turning the city into a major metropolis.
Khan has long championed Jacksonville's "potential." But potential is not sustainable. Potential must eventually give way to growth, and potential will not keep Khan from moving the team, perhaps to London.
Jacksonville needs a star.
‘Lot J’
Ninety-eight days before the draft, Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry sat on a couch in his third-floor City Hall office, discussing the future of his city's preeminent attraction.
"It's a privilege to be an NFL city," he said, the Florida sunshine beaming through the windows, "but winning solves all problems."
Curry chuckled, flashing his bright white teeth. It was the laugh of a man who knows what's at stake.
Jacksonville might not have the high profile of some other Florida cities, but Curry is no small-town mayor. In 1968, Jacksonville's government consolidated with adjacent Duval County, making it the largest city by area in the contiguous United States. With nearly one million residents, it's the most populous in the state.
Trevor Lawrence left Clemson as the winningest quarterback in program history. Jeff Siner/ACC photo.
When the Jaguars are playing well, Curry said, the city's disparate parts come together as one. He referred to the 2017 season, when the team made it to the AFC Championship game.
"I couldn't (go) into a restaurant, or a coffee shop, or a store without (people wearing Jaguars attire)," Curry said. "They felt good about everything."
About two miles away, TIAA Bank Field, the home of the Jaguars shrouded by palm trees, sat mostly quiet.
Birds chirped. Employees buzzed around in golf carts. And from Lot J, a speaker screeched with the pained roar of a dinosaur. Jurassic Quest, the traveling, drive-through exhibition of life-size dinosaurs, had come to Jacksonville.
Khan had bigger plans for the lot. He envisioned a major entertainment complex, a boon to downtown. But a city council vote Jan. 12 killed the $450 million dollar proposal, and so for two weeks in January the lot was taken over by life-size prehistoric reptiles, like the plateosaurus and the lophostropheus. Entry fee: $49.
“Lot J was a piece of the puzzle," Curry said, "to make the team economically feasible over the long term."
There are more pieces. But the urgency with which Khan’s pushing for redevelopment points to a sobering reality: The team doesn't have to stay. Extinction is not off the table.
Curry will leave office in 2023, and he said he wants to make sure his successor understands how important the Jaguars are to the city.
Critics claim Curry has too cozy a relationship with Khan.
The mayor sees things differently.
“Here’s what I try to communicate to people, and it’s not a threat,” Curry said. “You have to nurture a relationship. Right? You have to demonstrate that you value it.
“I think those that come after me, and those that are making policy decisions right now, oughta think through that when politics seems to be getting in the way.”
‘Freakin’ stoked’
Jacksonville is drunk on hope.
Less than three miles from TIAA Bank Field, down Gator Bowl Boulevard and off of E. 8th Street, is Strings Sports Brewery. Serving house-crafted beer and bar food, Strings has become a favorite of Jaguars fans.
At around 5:30 p.m. on Jan. 20, all of the televisions were turned to ESPN. Jay Nessler, a Jaguars superfan, sat on a stool sipping a glass of the hazy IPA Bullet Bob.
“I saw our logo on ESPN more in one week,” Nessler said, “than I have in 20 years.”
Nessler was born in Jacksonville in September 1993, two months before the NFL awarded the city the team. His second birthday fell on the same weekend of the team’s first home game, Sept 3, 1995. Jacksonville lost.
TIAA Bank Field has yet to be home to a consistent winner. Joshua Needelman/Staff
These days, when the Jaguars lose, Nessler said his whole week gets ruined.
He wore black-rimmed glasses, a gray hoodie and a tight mustache not unlike that of Gardner Minshew, the Jaguars’ incumbent starting quarterback.
“It predates Gardner Minshew time,” Nessler said.
Sure it does. Jacksonville was overtaken with so-called “Minshew Mania” in 2019, when the then-rookie with the funky facial hair, jean shorts and gunslinger mentality restored a modicum of relevancy to the franchise. For all of the fanfare, the Jaguars finished just 6-10.
“When you’ve lost as much as the Jaguars have in the last decade, the fan base is crying out for hope,” said Gene Frenette, a veteran columnist in his 40th year at the Florida Times Union. “No one looked at Gardner Minshew and saw a generational quarterback like they do with Trevor.”
Lawrence at Clemson joined a program flirting with a dynasty. In Jacksonville, he’ll be asked to lead a franchise with just one winning season in the past 13 years. The Jaguars in 2017 went 10-6 and fell one win short of the Super Bowl, but otherwise have been perennial losers.
That the Jaguars even ended up in this spot, with the chance to draft Lawrence, felt like something of a miracle. Jacksonville beat the Indianapolis Colts, 27-20, the first week of the season, then fell into a miserable losing streak. The New York Jets were winless for much of the campaign and appeared primed to land the No. 1 overall pick, with Jacksonville likely to draft second.
Then the Jets won two of their three final regular-season games, and Jacksonville finished the season 1-15, the worst record in the NFL. The No. 1 pick was theirs.
“I was talking myself into liking (former Ohio State quarterback) Justin Fields (at No. 2) for the longest time,” said Colby Adeeb, a brewer and co-owner of Strings. “And then when the Jets won I was like, '(Forget) Justin Fields, Trevor Lawrence is so much better.’”
Adeeb said Strings plans to name a beer after Lawrence, perhaps playing on his jersey number: “16” and “Sweet 16” are options. The brewery asked the quarterback what his favorite kind of beer was over Instagram but didn’t get a response.
It’s unclear if Lawrence drinks — he’s a devout Christian — but Strings plans to have the beer ready for draft day. Nessler’s counting the days:
“We are freakin’ stoked."
‘Bortles!’
In the wake of Meyers’ hire, the opening salvo in what Jaguars fans hope is a sea change, NFL Hall of Fame wide receiver Randy Moss made headlines for ripping Duval County. The county makes up much of the Jacksonville metropolitan area.
“Duval County is not a good county to be in,” Moss said on ESPN. “And I’m talking about the violence — not just the people. I’m talking about the violence and the crime.”
It’s true that Jacksonville has long ranked among the most dangerous areas in Florida — and the entire Southeast — and it hasn’t always been presented favorably in pop culture.
In the hit NBC comedy The Good Place, on which Clemson philosophy professor Todd May was a consultant, the character Jason Mendoza was portrayed as a lovable if absent-minded Jacksonville native and Jaguars fanatic. Throughout the series Mendoza professed his irrational love for former Jaguars quarterback Blake Bortles, a middling talent who's now a Los Angeles Rams backup.
“Bortles!” Mendoza shouted over and over again, and America laughed.
It’s not unreasonable that the city would prefer an alternative point of identification. Sports Mania, an apparel store on 3rd Street in Jacksonville Beach, on Jan. 21 was already selling Lawrence-themed gear — not officially licensed.
Jacksonville has not always been presented favorably in pop culture. It’s not unreasonable that the city would prefer an alternative point of identification. Joshua Needelman/Staff
On the front wall of the store, Sports Mania offered two options — the first T-shirt was black, with Lawrence’s last name and the number “1” written in white. The other followed the same color scheme, with the quarterback’s full name encircled in a box with a plea at the bottom: “Make Duval Great Again.”
The adjacent rack featured a pair of Minshew shirts, which an employee said were likely to soon go on sale.
For longtime residents, all of the hoopla surrounding the young star quarterback feels familiar. Taped to a freezer inside Beach Hut Cafe, a no-frills Jacksonville Beach bistro with an analog menu board and a meat loaf lunch special on Mondays, is an old sticker, one half Jaguars teal and the other Florida Gators orange.
“DRAFT TEBOW” it said.
Savior
Jacksonville is about 80 miles north of the University of Florida’s campus in Gainesville, meaning it’s in Gator country. It’s also in Tim Tebow country.
Tebow, a Jacksonville native and the 2007 Heisman Trophy winner, took the college football world by storm in the late 2000s when he helped Florida — then coached by Meyer — to a pair of national championships.
Jaguars fans buzzed about the possibility of the team taking Tebow in the 2010 NFL Draft, but then the Denver Broncos selected the quarterback No. 25 overall. His NFL career never panned out, and Tebow since 2016 has played in the New York Mets’ farm system.
Trevor Lawrence led Clemson to the College Football Playoff in each of his three Clemson seasons. Ken Ruinard/ACC photo.
That hasn’t stopped some from clamoring for the fantastical notion of Tebow pairing up with Meyer once more. It is not uncommon for sports fans to conflate nostalgia with practicality, but the fan base’s continued love affair with Tebow underscores an important point: Jacksonville loves a savior.
Here comes Lawrence.
Is it fair to place such a burden on one man’s shoulders? Perhaps not. But if not him, then who? Lawrence is soft-spoken but strong-willed; young but seasoned. Lawrence in 2020 put up career-best numbers while pushing for change at a time of of massive unrest, upheaval and polarization. He's the kind of leader supporters of rival teams can't help but admire. He stood proudly in front of a 'Black Lives Matter' banner and hardly lost a fan.
Jacksonville might not be London, but it has potential. Jaguars fans can see themselves inside the stadium post-pandemic, packed in on top of each other, all screaming and howling, knowing their knight in shining locks has arrived.
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