Why Jaguars Make Sense For Tetairoa McMillan

They’re not an M. Night Shyamalan flick but the Jaguars do have more mystery and intrigue than any team in the top 10 entering Thursday’s draft. Could Tetairoa McMillan be their Bruce Willis?

Don’t be startled. Two comparison players in the career histories of Liam Coen and Trevor Lawrence form the foundation of why McMillan makes a lot of sense for Jacksonville. Those receivers are Mike Evans and Tee Higgins.

“You put McMillan there with Brian Thomas and now you have your nucleus for the next five years,” said analyst Ari Meirov. “That is going to be what Liam Coen had with Mike Evans and Chris Godwin in Tampa Bay. That is essentially going to be what Trevor Lawrence had at Clemson.

“I think he’s a perfect player for what Liam Coen is trying to do with this offense. He was brough there to try to fix Trevor Lawrence. There is no better way to do that than getting him a weapon here.”

Gladstone reportedly is a big proponent of analytics. Well, the big-bodied Evans in his only season with Coen calling plays last year in Tampa Bay posted a career-high 62.7 receiving success rate. ProFootballReference.com defines that calculation as gaining 40 percent of the yards needed on first down, 60 percent of yards needed on second down and 100 percent on third and fourth downs – divided by targets. That’s just one reason why Evans was crucial to the success of Baker Mayfield and the Buccaneers last year in Coen’s playbook.

McMillan reminds a lot of scouts of Evans but so does Higgins, another big-bodied target who played with Lawrence at Clemson in 2019 and helped the Tigers to a berth in the national championship. Higgins that season posted 1,167 yards and 13 touchdowns on 59 catches (19.8 avg.). Lawrence threw for 3,665 yards and 36 touchdowns.

McMillan is 6-4 and 213 pounds. Higgins is 6-4, 219. Evans is 6-5, 231.

The Arizona prospect is also an intriguing story. Ironically a high-school teammate of Mason Graham at Servite High School in Southern California, where he was the Travis Hunter of the CIF’s Southern Section. McMillan, nicknamed T-Mac, earned player of the year honors while playing wide receiver and posting eight interceptions as a defensive back.

McMillan earned plenty of play-maker adjectives at Arizona, after a stellar three-year career with the Wildcats. Regarded by most as the draft’s best wide receiver, he registered 3,423 receiving yards, most in the country from 2022-24, and led the nation with 35 receptions of 20-or-more air yards over his three college seasons.

Reporters asked Coen last week whether the Jaguars have receivers on the current roster who can take pressure off Thomas.

“We're going to spread the ball out hopefully equally,” Coen said. “That was the nice thing about being last year with Tampa, we had to play a lot of different players in different personnel groupings. I think you look naturally right now at Parker Washington and Dyami Brown at the receiver positions. Then saying Brenton Strange hopefully continues to ascend. How do we use our two running backs to be able to supplement some of that usage, get more people involved in the game especially early on, so defenses can't just cloud BT and be all over him, that we have other guys that can go win and be explosive with the ball in their hands, ultimately share that wealth, share that play-making ability?”

That spotlight at least on Thursday is firmly centered on Jacksonville, which figures to choose from the draft’s best defensive tackle in Graham, the best running back in Ashton Jeanty or the best wide receiver in McMillan. Or, perhaps James Gladstone can move back, still get one of those players, and reap a bounty of additional draft capital.

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