Is Trevor Lawrence Good Enough?
Alex Katson interviews two Jaguars fans about whether or not Trevor Lawrence can save the franchise from getting stuck in neutral.
Usually, when Wide Left profiles a quarterback, it’s one the author has a connection to. JJ McCarthy was drafted by the Vikings. Jordan Love and Jared Goff are also NFC North passers. Justin Herbert is the face of the franchise for the team I both cover and have rooted for my entire life.
So when asked to expand the series behind our horizons and examine Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence, it seemed only natural that I consult an expert.
Luke Manship is not a journalist, nor a former team employee or otherwise networked member of the football industry. The closest he’s come to such was as part of the team that built the NFL Combine dashboard presented by Amazon QuickSight in February.
He is, however, a Jaguars fan — a curse that he had already chosen of his own free will by the time we met one another and became best friends in 2005.
Manship has watched every Jaguars game since then, with the exception of a few games in 2012 or 2013, which he tells Wide Left was “the worst Jaguars era of all time.” As roommates, we had bought a second television in our college apartment primarily so that he could watch the Jags while our other roommate and I watched RedZone like normal people.
Which is why I’m very confident in telling you that Manship is not a normal, casual fan. He was watching draft cutups way back in the golden era of Draft Twitter in the early 2010s. Moving in together for college is how I learned how to watch tape — the Jaguars season was over by November, so we would grab dinner and watch Jarrad Davis cutups in our dorm room while he taught me the basics of what to look for. This is how I know what The Draft Network is, and, by extension, how I have this job.
So, in pursuing the question of whether or not Trevor Lawrence is good, which, as a reminder, carries a nebulous and varying definition in each installment of this series, I interviewed Manship. After two decades of discoursing about the sport with him, I perhaps should have expected that the transcript of our conversation would exceed 12,000 words. For your sanity, I have edited that down considerably.
For a little more rationality, I also interviewed SB Nation writer JP Acosta, another close personal friend and lifelong Jaguars fan, via text message for additional input. He was much more economical in his responses, because he respects me as a person.
Do You Think Trevor Lawrence is Good?
“It’s Mark Brunell one, Trevor Lawrence two, and then David Garrard three. That’s all we got. Blake Bortles might be four.”
When still naively under the impression that my sitdown with Manship would end in time for us to catch happy hour at the brewery down the street from his apartment, I figured it would be a good start to ask him the central question of the series.
WL: Is Trevor Lawrence good?
Luke Manship: Good for the Jaguars, obviously yes. He is good. In terms of the league, what is good? Like the 12th-best quarterback?
I think after the 2022 season, people were starting to talk about [Lawrence] as a top-10 quarterback in the league. And now, lists are coming out this summer and he’s [as low as] 17th, behind Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray and one spot ahead of Drake Maye.
Some of these lists are criminal and I won’t respond to them. That’s too low, but 8 feels high, you know what I mean? But I feel the same way about CJ Stroud. Like, 17 feels low, but 8 feels high. Baker Mayfield, same thing. So we’re in that zone.
Acosta also has Lawrence somewhere in that range, naming the Jaguars quarterback to his honorable mentions on a recent podcast episode centering around the top 10 quarterbacks in the league.
“I think [Lawrence has] the arm talent and accuracy, especially downfield, to be a super dynamic quarterback,” Acosta told Wide Left.
But most of the quarterbacks in that range — Mayfield, Stroud, Geno Smith, Love, Murray — can count handfuls of national pundits among their supporters. Lawrence feels almost forgotten, tossed into this tier while sliding backwards from the national hype he accumulated during the Jaguars’ first playoff run in half a decade, now without institutional support. Why is that?
So this is like, the opposite of the Dak Prescott problem. Prescott is watched by every casual fan. If he ever makes a mistake, everyone is like ah yeah, Dak sucks. My family are Cowboys fans. They hate Dak Prescott. They want him gone. He’s just inconsistent. Big moments, he fails. No one watches the Jaguars. Even when they’re performing well, no one is watching this team. You only see Jaguars highlights when they’re funny. Do you know how the rest of that Eagles game with Saquon [Barkley] went?
Actually, I have no idea.
That game was really close! And it seems like it was a blowout because Saquon hurdled somebody backwards. That’s the kind of stuff you see from the Jacksonville Jaguars on your television.
Lawrence is banged up with an AC joint injury that he ends up getting surgery on. The first half, classic Jaguars. We’re running it into heavy boxes, we’re getting two yards a carry, we are not supporting Lawrence.
Brian Thomas Jr. comes into that game with a chest injury and is playing through it. Gabe Davis is just out. [Barkley] reverse hurdles, we all think the game is over. [Laughing.] We’re like, okay, we can’t recover from that. The game is over. I’m screaming in your house because like, of course this happened to us. This is the only team this could happen to.

I do remember this. You got up and were very animated. It was upsetting.
But, the last two drives of that game, the Jaguars are losing by 12. The Jags are driving. They’ve [at some point lost] every starting receiver and [right tackle] Anton Harrison, and Walker Little was already playing at that point. And [starting left guard Cooper Hodges] goes down and then I think medically retires after this game. And Lawrence takes his backup band of receivers and the scraps of an offensive line–
The practice squad, basically.
Drives down, touchdown. Then, Lawrence takes the team down the field again, throwing to Austin Trammell. And [offensive coordinator] Press Taylor, the genius of all geniuses, decides to dial up a wheel route to the third-string running back. Travis Etienne is fine. Tank Bigsby, also fine. But for some reason, it’s D’Ernest Johnson time.
And Nakobe Dean picks him off in the end zone because it’s basically a pre-designed read. Dean says later ‘It’s a play I knew they had.’ So Lawrence has been tasked with this offensive gameplan, he has Evan Engram and a practice squad and no offensive line, and somehow he almost defeats the Super Bowl champions. I don’t know man, it seems like he’s pretty good. But what the casual fan saw at the end of that game is ha ha, Trevor Lawrence threw an interception with the game on the line.
What Are People Missing with Trevor Lawrence?
“When we look at the Trevor Lawrence career arc, we don’t look at all the little things, because the big things are so big. Like, Urban Meyer is so big that you can’t remove yourself and be like, ‘Oh yeah, by the way, the first-round running back that you specifically drafted to be on the team just isn’t.’”
Manship has a point — nobody watches the Jaguars. My job is to watch football and he’s in my house watching the Jaguars game every Sunday and I’m still interviewing him about Trevor Lawrence because I can’t recall almost anything that happened to Jacksonville in the last four NFL seasons.
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