{"id":297679,"date":"2026-06-05T21:07:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T21:07:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/297679\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T21:07:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T21:07:13","slug":"fantasy-football-sleepers-busts-predictions-2026-jacksonville-jaguars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/297679\/","title":{"rendered":"Fantasy Football Sleepers, Busts & Predictions: 2026 Jacksonville Jaguars"},"content":{"rendered":"

Throw out Urban Meyer. Forget his tenure altogether. The Jaguars<\/a> would appreciate that. But with that done, each of the Jags\u2019 last three head coaches (Liam Coen, Doug Pederson, Doug Marrone) have one thing in common: They each won the AFC South in their first year in Jacksonville<\/a>. That\u2019s good, of course. A team doesn\u2019t normally hire a new head coach when it\u2019s in great shape, so winning the division in Year One speaks well of the Jaguars. The team was 3-13 before hiring Marrone, 3-14 before Pederson, 4-13 before Coen. The problem? The year after Marrone\u2019s Jags won the division, they fell to 5-11 and last place, and Marrone never got back to the playoffs in Jacksonville. In Pederson\u2019s second year, they only fell to second in the division, but they missed the playoffs, and he never got back as the Jags coach, either. So now it\u2019s Coen\u2019s turn. He took the Jags from 4-13 to 13-4. Can he break the trend of Jacksonville coaches starting hot and flaming out? Or is the team destined to fall way off in Year Two?<\/p>\n

2026 Sleepers, Busts & Bold Predictions: Jacksonville JaguarsSleeper: Jakobi Meyers<\/a>, WR<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

ADP<\/p>\n

Finish<\/p>\n

2019<\/p>\n

WR90<\/p>\n

WR97<\/p>\n

2020<\/p>\n

WR145<\/p>\n

WR53<\/p>\n

2021<\/p>\n

WR59<\/p>\n

WR29<\/p>\n

2022<\/p>\n

WR56<\/p>\n

WR29<\/p>\n

2023<\/p>\n

WR53<\/p>\n

WR24<\/p>\n

2024<\/p>\n

WR53<\/p>\n

WR19<\/p>\n

2025<\/p>\n

WR40<\/p>\n

WR32<\/p>\n

Meyers is entering his eighth NFL season, and other than generally agreeing he wasn\u2019t worth much for fantasy as an undrafted rookie back in 2019, the drafting community has pretty much never been right on him. Per FantasyPros ADP, he\u2019s never once been drafted higher than WR40, which was his ADP last year. But also, he\u2019s on a five-year run of finishing WR32 or better. We just keep finding (understandable) reasons to be down on him. 2021, he had never scored a touchdown. 2022, the Patriots had turned to a rookie quarterback and just signed DeVante Parker<\/a>. 2023, he had moved to Las Vegas<\/a> and had Jimmy Garoppolo\/Aidan O\u2019Connell at quarterback. 2024, another Davante (this time Davante Adams<\/a>). 2025 was the closest we came to buying in, and still he topped 800 yards for the fifth straight year. Now, Meyers is in Jacksonville, and he\u2019s the third Jaguars receiver in the earliest ADP, WR42 behind Brian Thomas Jr.<\/a> (WR34) and Parker Washington<\/a> (WR35). But just watch: Meyers will be the No. 2 Jaguars receiver in fantasy at worst, maybe the No. 1.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

Bust: Bhayshul Tuten<\/a>, RB\"CINCINNATI,<\/p>\n

CINCINNATI, OH – SEPTEMBER 14: Jacksonville Jaguars running back Bhayshul Tuten (33) carries the ball for a touchdown during the game against the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Cincinnati Bengals on September 14, 2025, at Paycor Stadium in Cincinnati, OH. (Photo by Ian Johnson\/Icon Sportswire)<\/p>\n

The \u201cWho will emerge from the Jacksonville backfield?!\u201d conundrum from last offseason feels pretty quaint now, doesn\u2019t it? Tank Bigsby<\/a> was dealt to Philadelphia<\/a> after one game. Bhayshul Tuten got 83 carries, only reaching double-digit carries or 45 yards in a game once. Meanwhile, Travis Etienne Jr.<\/a> bounced back from a downer of a 2024 to have 260 carries for 1,107 yards en route to an RB10 finish. But with Etienne in New Orleans<\/a> now, and Bigsby obviously in Philadelphia, and Chris Rodriguez Jr.<\/a> the only big addition, surely it\u2019s Tuten\u2019s time to shine, right? Well, not so fast. Tuten\u2019s big claim entering the league was his speed, but he struggled to break any kind of big run last year, so that\u2019s a concern. Add in the concerns of Rodriguez \u2014 there are 31 teams that could have signed him for which the reaction would have only been a resigned shrug. This was the exception. In Jacksonville, Rodriguez is reunited with his offensive coordinator in college at Kentucky. Rodriguez played five seasons for the Wildcats. In four of them, he put up 43, 533, 785 and 904 rushing yards. In the fifth (not even his last season, but his junior year), he put up 1,379 in Coen\u2019s offense. The fact that Rodriguez was pretty much the Jags\u2019 only free agent signing this offseason tells me Coen wanted him in a bad way. He\u2019s not enough of a receiver to be a fantasy factor himself, but he\u2019ll horn in on Tuten\u2019s work enough to make this a stay-away backfield.<\/p>\n

Bold Prediction: The Jaguars Finish Third in the AFC South<\/p>\n

If I had to pick one thing that teams most often get wrong, it\u2019s a firm belief that \u201cWhatever went right will stay right, and whatever went wrong will fix itself.\u201d It\u2019s one of the reasons why it\u2019s so hard to repeat as a Super Bowl champion, or even the runner-up. The best teams always have less turnover than the worse ones, and yes, that\u2019s in part because they have good players to begin with, but it\u2019s also because of inertia. There\u2019s nothing making them change, so why should they? \u201cPlayer X got hurt last year, so if we add his normal year to Player Y\u2019s breakout year, that\u2019s a rocket to the moon!\u201d ignores that Player Y is likely to regress, things like that. No one embodies that more than this year\u2019s Jaguars. Yes, the Jaguars are way better than the 4-13 team from 2024, but nobody thought this team was a new coaching staff away from contender status a year ago. Now, they have a good year, and suddenly, the most meaningful additions this offseason are Chris Rodriguez Jr., Ruke Orhorhoro<\/a> and Nate Boerkircher? The Jaguars didn\u2019t need to tear it down and start over, but they should have used a surprise 2025 as a jumping-off point, not a finish line.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Throw out Urban Meyer. Forget his tenure altogether. The Jaguars would appreciate that. But with that done, each…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297680,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[42615,9263,88205,9261,125322,125320,125321,116,118,117,16009,1630,23195,12035,5323,33222,5017,14250,105315,12101,80668],"class_list":["post-297679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-bhayshul-tuten","tag-brian-thomas-jr","tag-chris-rodriguez-jr","tag-davante-adams","tag-devante-parker","tag-doug-marrone","tag-doug-pederson","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-jags","tag-jaguars","tag-jakobi-meyers","tag-las-vegas","tag-liam-coen","tag-new-orleans","tag-parker-washington","tag-philadelphia","tag-ruke-orhorhoro","tag-tank-bigsby","tag-travis-etienne-jr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}