2020 NFL Draft: First-Round 2020 NFL mock draft with counterintuitive picks throughout

With the departure of Jalen Ramsey during the free agency period of 2019, the Jacksonville Jaguars now need secondary help, on a team that once led through the defense. They have let several defensive pieces go this offseason, preparing to rebuild the defense once again.

Most of the elite defense from their 2018 AFC Championship game is gone or almost out the door. A.J.Bouye was traded to Denver Broncos for what amounts to a compensatory pick a year early. Yannick Ngakoue was franchise tagged but is expected to be on the trade market. Legendary defensive line leader and all-around cool guy Calais Campbell was traded to Baltimore, removing an effective leader on the defense.

While the team signed Darqueze Dennard to a three-year contract at cornerback, the Jaguars still needs a ton of help at all levels of the defense. The Jaguars got lots of draft capital for their lost defense. They now have extra draft picks between the 2020 NFL Draft and the following draft in 2021. But with multiple holes on defense, picking one to fill in the first round is anyone’s guess.

Conventional thinking has a defensive lineman going in the first round to the Jaguars. So naturally, the contrarian thing to do here is for the team to draft Ohio State cornerback Jeffery Okudah ninth overall.

This pairing actually sounds so right, it shouldn’t surprise anyone if the Jaguars move up to draft him in the 2020 NFL Draft. With extra picks in the next two drafts, they have more than enough ammunition to get a deal done. After all, Okudah is everything Ramsey was (excluding Ramsey’s propensity to trash talk).

Okudah has great tracking, great speed, stickiness to wide receivers that you won’t find anywhere else. At 6-foot-1, 200-pounds he is the ideal height for a cornerback. He hits receivers hard coming off the snap and doesn’t give anyone a break until the play is over.

Where Okudah goes in the 2020 NFL Draft is such a wild card at this point in the draft process. The Buckeye prospect has such “can’t miss” attributes that it wouldn’t be shocking if any number of teams move up to draft him. He only had three interceptions during his college career but that just goes to show how little he was targeted in college.

He only slides down this far on the contrarian mock draft because he is a little too physical past the contact zone, something cornerbacks struggle with as they make the transition between college and the NFL. If someone is looking for problems with Okudah’s game, it is tough to find many.