Trevor Lawrence’s name landed in a strange place in ESPN’s latest quarterback rankings, and for the Jaguars, it’s hard to call it anything but a head-scratcher.
ESPN polled anonymous scouts, coaches and executives for its list of the NFL’s top 20 passers heading into the 2026 season, and Lawrence checked in at No. 16.
That put him behind Baker Mayfield and ahead of Jalen Hurts, while also slotting him above fellow AFC South quarterbacks Daniel Jones at No. 19 and C.J. Stroud at No.
The placement reads more like a shrug than a real evaluation. One AFC offensive coach told Fowler, “He has controlled his turnovers and just has a better understanding of what defenses are trying to do against him. ...
He plays better ball when the offensive infrastructure and personnel around him set him up for success instead of asking him to do everything on your own. Liam [Coen] did a nice job in Year 1 of giving him the answers to the test pre-snap.”
That kind of praise sits awkwardly next to a No. 16 ranking, especially when Lawrence is being grouped with quarterbacks who come with far more obvious questions. Hurts is described as a limited passer who keeps cycling through play-callers and targets.
Bo Nix is framed as a Gardner Minshew-knockoff with a hefty price tag. Jones and Stroud are below Lawrence, but not by much.
The list also puts several quarterbacks ahead of him who have their own issues. Caleb Williams comes in at No. 10 after one productive season.
Jayden Daniels is ahead of Lawrence despite having only one productive season of his own, and that was in 2024. Sam Darnold is ranked higher after, as the source put it, being more or less carried to a Super Bowl ring.
Baker Mayfield’s summary even includes the word “winner,” despite a sub-.500 career winning percentage.
Lawrence is not being treated as perfect, and he hasn’t been. His 2024 season was the worst of his career that wasn’t led by Urban Meyer, and injuries and inconsistency have been part of the story too. But coming off what was arguably the best year of his career, there’s little reason to assume he won’t keep climbing in 2026.
The top of the rankings is easy enough to separate, with Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes and Matthew Stafford occupying the top three spots. After that, the order gets murkier. Still, putting Lawrence all the way down at No. 16 stretches credibility.
The argument against him seems to lean on the idea that 2025 may have been a one-year spike, helped along by Coen’s arrival. That’s fair enough to raise.
But the broader case for Lawrence is stronger than the ranking suggests. When he had an NFL-caliber supporting cast and a real support system around him, his talent showed up in a way it hadn’t since 2022, the last time he had a strong cast and atmosphere to work in.
That’s the version of Lawrence that stands out: not the quarterback scrambling to fix everything snap after snap, but the one who can go toe-to-toe with almost anyone when the pieces around him are in place.
He still has work to do before he belongs in the Allen-Mahomes-Stafford tier. But there’s no serious case for him being the 16th-best quarterback in football. If anything, ESPN’s list just confirmed what the Jaguars already know: Trevor Lawrence is the NFL’s most underrated passer.
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