How Jaguars will prepare while waiting until pick 56 in draft to select
· Yahoo Sports
It's going to be a long wait for the Jacksonville Jaguars before they are on the clock, making their first selection in the 2026 NFL draft.
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After trading up to pick No. 2 a year ago, the Jaguars now won't be making their first pick until Day 2, at No. 56 overall. Every team but the Broncos will have made a selection by that point in the draft.
While that may seem like a while to wait, considering that the Jaguars won't be participating in Night 1 of the draft, this is far from uncharted territory for James Gladstone and Liam Coen.
In 2018, when both were with the Rams, LA's first selection wasn't until pick No. 89. In 2019, it was pick No. 61, and in 2020, it was pick No. 52. Then, when Coen returned for the 2022 season, the Rams weren't on the clock for the first time until pick No. 104.
"Liam's been through waiting before, a lot longer before," Gladstone said with a smile. "There is no doubt about it. We've waited longer. There is no doubt. 104 was our first pick. So, we at least get to cut that in half a little bit."
The time that the Jaguars are waiting for their turn to pick will be spent constantly evaluating the draft board and what scenarios could play out for when their time does come to make a selection.
"You're always going to stay agile, and so you're never bored," Gladstone said. "You're always thinking through what might we be able to do? And I think that mental gymnastics certainly is an engaging element, regardless of where your first pick point is."
While the Jaguars don't run through mock drafts, in the weeks leading up to the actual draft, they do go through numerous scenarios, identifying what they want to do in the event a specific pool of players becomes available.
Whatever decision is made in Round 2 then has an impact on what happens in Round 3 and beyond.
'We walk through, hey, if if this pot of players is there, which one do we feel most comfortable targeting knowing that at our next pick point or our next few pick points, these are the players that we feel like may be in scope," said Gladstone. "How do we feel about the combination of these different players together? So on and so forth. We're working through that a little bit.
Gladstone continued, "And obviously, that stuff on draft night, there's no telling. All it takes is one team to take a player that you want and you're moving on to the next that you were eyeing up. And that may in fact alter what you do at the pickpoint behind it and the pickpoint behind that. So we're trying to chop through that a little bit as best we can."
Another element of the pre-draft prep work that takes place is Gladstone and his staff identifying potential draft tendencies that the team may have and being aware of them so that they do not become too predictable. Jacksonville is also aware of how other teams may act because that can dictate how Gladstone navigates the draft board.
"All teams, just like offenses and defense throughout the years have typical tendencies that they lean into and they break those tendencies, which is always fun. We try to do the same and be aware of our own so that they can't totally be leveraged against us," Gladstone said.
"So I I think that is a very very important piece to our mapping of where we might need to get ahead of somebody or be able to jump in the draft or feel comfortable if we were able to move back a certain amount that we're not at risk for losing out on a couple players that we want to target. So that's an important piece to that strategy is being in tune with a lot of those elements from each club or even trees of decision makers."
Although without a first-round pick this year, the Jaguars have 11 selections in total, including four picks in the top 100, giving Gladstone quite a bit of flexibility.
This article originally appeared on Jaguars Wire: 2026 NFL draft: Jaguars' Gladstone well-versed in not having first-round pick