Jacksonville Jaguars
Role Player
Jacksonville Jaguars Hidden Gems: 3 Secret Superstars on the 2025 roster
Source: https://www.bigcatcountry.com/2025/...s-jarrian-jones-dennis-gardeck-bhayshul-tuten
Photo by Courtney Culbreath/Getty Images
The Jacksonville Jaguars have been trying to find their way for a very long time. Here are three Secret Superstars who could, along with a new org chart, point things in the right direction.
There was a time, not so long ago, when the Jacksonville Jaguars had the NFL’s best defense, were among NFL’s best teams when it counted, and were one half of football away from a Super Bowl, You don’t have to go through the dim recesses of your mind to get back to 2017, and the 14-3 second-half lead this franchise had over the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship game, before Bill Belichick and Tom Brady did what they nearly always did.
Those Jaguars looked to be contenders for a while, but a series of ill-informed front office decisions spit the bit before things could really get going. Whether it was Executive VP of Football Operations Tom Coughlin telling everybody to get off his lawn from 2018-2019, which led to the basement 1-15 season in 2020, or Urban Meyer’s all-time nuclear disaster in 2021, or the hiring of aggressively odd general manager Trent Baalke that same season, the Jaguars’ 37-79 record and .319 win rate since 2018 (fourth-worst in the NFL in both cases) speak to the truth of things.
The 2025 Jaguars responded to the 2024 Jaguars’ 4-13 record by giving Baalke and head coach Doug Pederson their walking papers, replacing them with former Los Angeles Rams Director of Scouting James Gladstone as the new GM, and former Rams and Tampa Bay Buccaneers offensive coordinator Liam Coen as the head coach. Obviously, the primary construct in Coen’s contract is to get the most and best out of Trevor Lawrence, which has been a mixed bag before.
But more than that, it’s about the Jaguars regaining some authority in their stance. The decision to trade up in the first round to take Colorado WR/CB/Unicorn From Outer Space Travis Hunter was just that kind of bold move, but there’s obviously more to be done as this franchise looks to put all the wrong moves in the rear-view.
In the continuation of our “Hidden Gems” series, we look at one underrated veteran, one underrated free-agent signing, and one underrated draft pick who could help the Jags become a serious matter once again.
Underrated Veteran: CB Jarrian Jones
Photo by Logan Bowles/Getty Images/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/26059551/2219544689.jpg "Jacksonville Jaguars Mandatory Minicamp")
So, the underrated veteran is a guy whose rookie season was in 2024? What the what?
Well, this is an opportunity to trumpet what Jarrian Jones did in that rookie season, and also to discuss how important it is to have a dedicated slot defender in today’s NFL, where 3x1 and 2x2 sets are the order of the day, and the ways in which receivers are deployed from there are more complex than ever. You can have great outside cornerbacks all day long, but if your main slot guy is vulnerable, quarterbacks will figure that out.
That was not a problem for the Jaguars in 2024, primarily because Jones came in as a third-round pick out of Florida State, and nailed down that nickel/slot/overhang stuff. Overall, Jones had 85% of his 718 snaps in the slot last season, 15% in the box, and 1% as an outside cornerback. And he was lockdown from Day 1, allowing 45 catches on 62 targets for 457 yards, 317 yards after the catch, no touchdowns, one interception, six pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 86.6. Slot defenders will see higher catch rates to a degree because they’re going against receivers who will catch underneath the coverage, and there’s no boundary to help you out, but Jones took to it immediately, and that’s after just one season with the Seminoles in which he was the primary slot man.
I got to talk with Jones at the 2024 scouting combine about his collegiate work, and the guy was not lacking in confidence.
“My entire body of work from the 2023 season,” he said with a laugh when I asked him to detail his best play. “Like I said, the numbers speak for themselves, and if you look at the numbers, I was statistically the best.
“I didn’t make any plays in this game, but go watch me against Wake Forest. See me pressing against the slot, and you’ll see what’s up.”
Which was indeed a good place to start. It’s not easy to press when in the slot because you can lose easily versus option routes and two-way goes, but once again, Jones had it together. And in that season, when 394 of his 453 snaps came from the slot, he allowed 16 catches on 32 targets for 158 yards, 117 yards after the catch, no touchdowns, three interceptions, three pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 25.3. So when he said that he was “statistically the best,” he had a point.
The NFL is obviously more complex, but Jones’ understanding of his position, and how it relates to the rest of the ecosystem, was very clear very quickly.
“He can be as good as he wants to be,” former defensive coordinator Ryan Nielsen said of Jones as the 2024 season came down. “That’s where he’s going to go, is if he wants to be the best, then he’ll continue to trend and work that way. If he thinks that this is it, then this is what you’ll see, which he’s playing really good football right now. But there’s another step in his game. That’s the thing, there is another step and another level for him to achieve in this league, to really become one of the most dominant players at his position. He’ll tell you that that’s what he wants to do. So, we’ve just got to continue to stay dominant, we’ve got to be disciplined in the things that we do going into the offseason and come back even better next year, now that he knows the season in the NFL. He can do it. We’ve just got to take the one-day-at-a-time approach.”
Nielsen also had a lot to say about the importance of having a great slot defender in any modern defense, and how Jones stepped up to that opportunity.
“It’s a tough position to find, for sure. For a player to play it at a high level, there’s not a lot of guys out there that can. It’s one of the toughest positions to find for a guy to come in, especially a rookie, and have an immediate impact like he has. It’s been pretty impressive. So, give him all the credit in the world because he really did have the right mental approach coming into the season and got thrown in there very early, and he’s taken it and made it his position and ran with it, so it’s been pretty cool to see.”
We’re still waiting to see how the outside cornerback stuff shakes out, especially with how much Travis Hunter plays there, but when it comes to that nickel slot, the Jags are just fine.
Underrated Free-Agent Signing: EDGE Dennis Gardeck
Photo by Norm Hall/Getty Images/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/26059555/2172445502.jpg "Los Angeles Rams v Arizona Cardinals")
Dennis Gardeck has been an underdog throughout his NFL career. An undrafted free agent out of the University of Sioux Falls (one of four people to ever make the pros after time with the Cougars), Gardeck signed with the Arizona Cardinals in 2018, played a grand total of three non-special teams snaps in his first two seasons, and finally got on the field as an edge defender in 2020 after Chandler Jones’ season-ending injury. In just 94 snaps and 79 pass-rushing opportunities, he blew everyone away with seven sacks and 18 total pressures, proving to be just about unblockable in limited reps.
Gardeck followed that up with further transition time as he suffered his first ACL injury, but he was all the way back for the 2023 season, when he totaled six sacks and 42 pressures, looking very much like a developing elite-level quarterback disruptor. Gardeck built upon that in Week 2 of the 2024 season, when he went absolutely thermonuclear on the Los Angeles Rams’ offensive line with three sacks, four pressures, five stops, and a forced fumble in a 41-10 Cardinals win.
A week later, he logged his second career interception against the Detroit Lions when he dropped into hook/curl coverage and stole a shallow cross attempt from Jared Goff to tight end Brock Wright.
Sadly, there was another torn ACL that ended his 2024 campaign seven weeks in, and now, Gardeck is starting over once again on the one-year, $2 million contract with $1.5 million guaranteed the Jaguars gave him. That’s a ridiculous bargain if the 30-year-old, who will turn 31 on August 9, can return to form.
While the size of Gardeck’s contract tells you that few in the league believe he can come back from all of it, betting against this guy has proven to be a fool’s errand before.
Underrated Draft Pick: RB Bhayshul Tuten
Photo by Logan Bowles/Getty Images/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/26059556/2219850695.jpg "Jacksonville Jaguars Mandatory Minicamp")
In Liam Coen’s one year as the Buccaneers’ offensive coordinator, he wasn’t just bolstered by a great offensive line, a killer receiver group, and the best of Baker Mayfield — he also got a lot of juice from rookie running back Bucky Irving, the fourth-round phenom from Oregon who led all first-year backs with 1,199 yards and eight rushing touchdowns on 224 carries. At 5’10 and 195 pounds, Irving isn’t the biggest back. but he proved to be a real bear to tackle with his speed and elusiveness, forcing 62 missed tackles on his way to 15 carries of 15 or more yards.
Coen couldn’t take Irving with him to Jacksonville, so he did the next best thing. With the 104th overall pick in the fourth round of the 2025 draft, the Jags snapped up Virginia Tech’s Bhayshul Tuten. If you didn’t have time to watch Tuten’s tape before the 2026 scouting combine, he did his best to make you take that time with an overall performance that was completely off the hook. Start with the 1.49-second 10-yard split (95th percentile among running backs at the combine since 1999) and the 4.32-second 40-yard dash (98th percentile), and the only question from there was whether it transferred to the field.
That, in fact, was not a problem. In 2024, the 5’ 9¼, 206-pound Tuten gained 1,150 yards and scored 15 rushing touchdowns on 183 carries. He forced 62 missed tackles (where have we seen that before?) and had 21 runs of 15 or more yards. All that despite the ankle injury he played through late in the season.
Tuten lasted as long as he did in the draft because there are concerns about his ability to make hay inside the tackles (which I don’t understand — he had 11 explosive runs last season going to the A- and B-gaps and he averaged 4.47 yards after contact per carry in 2024), and ball security is a bit of an issue (he had nine fumbles in two seasons with Tech after transferring from North Carolina A&T). But when you can get a back on the third day capable of setting a defense on its heels in multiple ways, it’s best to focus on what the prospect can do, and leave the rest to coaching.
Tuten’s NFL head coach already knows this.
“If you look at Tuten with the ability to strike from a distance, he can get to the second or third level and score from anywhere on the field,” Coen said after the draft of his new feature back. “I think behind the line of scrimmage, forced missed tackles [were] through the roof for him in terms of getting back or at least getting yards after that contact behind the line of scrimmage.”
Which sounds a lot like one Bucky Irving.
(All advanced metrics courtesy of Pro Football Focus and Sports Info Solutions).
Source: https://www.bigcatcountry.com/2025/...s-jarrian-jones-dennis-gardeck-bhayshul-tuten
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