National Football League

What does it mean to set realistic expectations for Trevor Lawrence’s rookie season?

Updated Jul. 30, 2021 8:15 a.m. ET

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By Martin Rogers
FOX Sports Columnist

Trevor Lawrence’s contract is inked, and he’s ready to go. The Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback is all done with the formalities, he’s signed and sealed, and it’s time for the show to begin.

The National Football League season is gradually edging closer, and it's full steam ahead, with nothing more standing in the way of Lawrence taking the pro football world by storm.

Except … reality.

Lawrence’s $36.8 million deal, on which he put pen to paper this week, was another step in the process leading up to his debut and served only to build the excitement of soon seeing one of the most highly touted QBs in college football history do his thing at an elite level.

Jacksonville has caught Trevor-mania and will likely catch it even stronger as the campaign approaches, with the locals rightly giddy about having a guy who never lost a regular-season game at Clemson come to town to try to turn around franchise fortunes.

If only it were that simple. One thing that often gets lost in the chatter when top drafted signal-callers enter the league is the reason the team that picked them got the chance to do so.

The Jaguars absolutely earned that top spot in April’s NFL Draft, stinking it up all the way to 1-15, with months of incessant losing after they won their season opener. Their defense was abysmal, as they gave up the most points and yards in team history, and the other side of the ball wasn’t much better.

While Urban Meyer is on board to maximize Lawrence’s potential, Tim Tebow is providing some supplemental entertainment value and the team is seeking swift, active improvement, it is clear that there is a heck of a long way to go for this team to even reach respectability.

"A 1-15 season is somewhere we don’t want to go back to," wide receiver D.J. Chark said. "We are trying to develop that winning culture."

Recent history does not speak kindly to the chances of Lawrence making a strong, immediate impact — or of the Jaguars getting any good, anytime soon.

Teams spending their No. 1 selection on a quarterback have rarely seen much in the way of instant spark. In fact, over the past 50 years, Andrew Luck is the only QB drafted first overall to post a winning rookie record — with the Indianapolis Colts in 2012.

Last season, the Cincinnati Bengals won just four games after taking Joe Burrow first. The former Heisman Trophy winner suffered a season-ending injury in Week 11 after showing some solid signs of progress.

Since Luck in 2012, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers won six games after taking Jameis Winston, the Los Angeles Rams won four after getting Jared Goff, the Cleveland Browns went 7-8-1 in the first year of Baker Mayfield, and the Arizona Cardinals managed 5-10-1 as Kyler Murray took his first steps into the league.

Maybe Lawrence is different. For Jacksonville to be even passably good, he’ll have to be extremely different.

Signs were solid from his initial contact with the Jaguars group, as Meyer flushed praise upon him. The first-year head coach did, however, warn that Lawrence is not a finished product yet — not that we should really need reminding.

"He’s not ready yet, but he doesn’t have to be," Meyer told USA TODAY. "We’ve got a long training camp coming up. He’s probably advanced a little quicker than we would’ve thought, which was a positive."

It makes sense that QBs find life tough coming into the league — especially those who are picked first in the draft. Wrapping your head around the NFL is tough for anybody, but add the hype that comes with being the anointed member of your class, plus the level of scrutiny and the fact that it puts an immediate target on your back, and it is no surprise that the results aren’t always pretty.

In a lot of ways, the leading QBs to come out of the draft are set up to fail, at least in terms of public expectations. Gradual improvement and incremental development don’t make for sexy headlines or highlight reels, and the win column is too often used as the barometer, even when the surrounding pieces give the player in question little chance to shine.

It would be easy to preach here that calm must be exercised, that nothing Lawrence does in his rookie year should be used as a definitive marker of what kind of career he is destined for.

But there’s no point because the fervor surrounding the league and the pressure that comes with it are too ingrained.

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If Lawrence can help lead the Jaguars anywhere near a record of parity, it would be a monumental achievement. So, too, would throwing for something close to Justin Herbert’s rookie record of 31 touchdowns, even with the extra game on the schedule.

If Lawrence goes 4-12 and the Jags don’t show a whole lot of lift, rest assured there will be early rumblings that he’s a bust, never mind that top-drafted QBs have averaged only 3.8 wins per season in modern times.

That critique won’t be fair, and it won't be logical, but fairness and logic are often in short supply when it comes to looking at No. 1 picks, in some ways the loneliest position of all.

Martin Rogers is a columnist for FOX Sports and the author of the FOX Sports Insider Newsletter. You can subscribe to the newsletter here.

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Trevor Lawrence

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Martin Rogers