While Trevor Lawrence was the star of the Jacksonville Jaguars’ 2021 draft class and star of the draft in general, the team’s other first-round pick, Travis Etienne, garnered a lot of buzz, too, as a former teammate of Lawrence. With his selection, the Jags made history by making the duo the first QB/RB pairing ever to be drafted by the same team in the first round after being teammates in college.
However, for NFL.com’s Lance Zierlein, the selection was a home run for reasons outside of history. In a recent article, he deemed Etienne’s selection as one of his favorites in Round 1 as it gave Lawrence a familiar face, and most importantly, a playmaker on offense.
There were three very good running backs in this draft, but I felt like Etienne was the best of the lot. Etienne went back to Clemson in 2020 because he wanted to accomplish his goals with his fellow teammates, and that is a quality Urban Meyer must love as he begins building his culture of competitiveness in Jacksonville. Etienne runs with extraordinary contact balance and can play on all three downs, offering Trevor Lawrence a familiar face and reliable teammate to go to battle with in their new journey at the next level.
There were some fans puzzled by the selection of Etienne, but many of them are viewing Etienne as a running back when the front office has come out to say they view him as an overall weapon. In other words, they see Etienne as a slot receiver, pass-catching option out of the backfield on third-downs, and much more. The reason for that is because the Jags’ offense lacked explosive plays last season — something that Urban Meyer has never been without as a coach.
With the selection of Etienne, the Jags can make things hard on opposing coordinators. Throughout his college career, he rushed for 70 rushing touchdowns throughout 686 carries and 4,952 rushing yards. In his last two years, he got better as a receiver, registering 432 yards and 588 yards, respectively. Those are figures that seemingly impressed the Jags who had the 28th ranked offense overall in 2020.
