Jaguars, Titans Battle for No. 1 Pick as AFC South Tries to Catch Andrew Luck

The Indianapolis Colts are your 2014 AFC South Champions. They mainly got there by beating up on the rest of the AFC South.

Since drafting quarterback Andrew Luck, the Colts have gone 15-2 against fellow AFC South teams. Quarterback Matt Schaub cratering brought the Texans back to Earth, and the Jaguars and Titans have been mediocre at best over the past three seasons.

This year, the Jaguars and Titans have hit rock bottom. Going into their Thursday Night Football matchup, both teams are 2-12, tied with the Buccaneers and Raiders for the worst record in the NFL. Per Football Outsiders' model, these teams combine for a 44 percent chance at having the top pick in the 2015 NFL draft, with Thursday night essentially serving as an elimination game for the honor. 

Team	Record	Top Pick Odds	Top Three Odds
TB	2-12	42.4%	85.8%
TEN	2-12	30.6%	82.2%
OAK	2-12	13.6%	62.1%
JAC	2-12	13.4%	45.3%
WAS	3-13	0.0%	16.2%
NYJ	3-13	0.0%	8.4%

Both the Jaguars and the Titans have watched young quarterbacks drafted in 2014 flop in their rookie seasons. Blake Bortles looked extremely promising in the preseason, but you can argue that he has actually regressed as he's gotten more reps down the stretch. Zach Mettenberger has good arm talent, but he plays like he's been bolted to a spot on the ground. 

The result? Both are in the bottom six among all qualifying quarterbacks in DVOA and DYAR, per Football Outsiders. Bortles is dead last, with almost double the negative DYAR of Bucs quarterback Josh McCown.

Player	DYAR (Rk)	DVOA (Rk)	QBR (Rk)
Blake Bortles	-775 (43)	-38.5% (42)	21.4 (42)
Zach Mettenberger	-248 (39)	-31.8% (38)	30.1 (38)

However, it's not just getting the No. 1 pick that vaults a team into contention: it's about getting the No. 1 pick at the right time and in the right circumstances. The Texans can attest to this, as they had the No. 1 overall pick last year, decided there was no franchise quarterback, and picked outside linebacker Jadeveon Clowney, who has undergone microfracture surgery and has an optimistic return to football timetable of mid-2015.

It may appear that the Jaguars and Titans—especially the Titans—should both tank to try to get Oregon quarterback Marcus Mariota. One NFL personnel man told Sports Illustrated's Peter King that Mariota is above Robert Griffin III as a prospect, and if you weren't following the NFL at the time, trust me, RG3 was seen as a surefire top-tier quarterback prospect. There's a reason Washington gave up three first-round picks to go get him.

However, are the timing and circumstances right? For the Jaguars, I think, they are rightfully not. For the Titans? They should be, but I don't know if they will be. 

Blake Bortles Will Get Another Season

As much as I think the game has changed with first-round quarterback picks—the rookie-scale contracts introduced by the new CBA have accelerated things to where you can give up on someone much more quickly, a la the Bills and quarterback EJ Manuel—I don't think the Jaguars are going to give up on Bortles this soon. 

General manager David Caldwell pounded the table for Bortles. Caldwell told Sports On Earth's Dan Pompei that he thought Bortles would have been the No. 1 pick in the 2015 NFL draft had he gone back to school:

"

I had to watch every play he made about 24 times over the last eight months. I don't understand what people were picking apart on him. Look, he's not perfect. I think you get caught up when you are picking high that he has to be the next Andrew Luck or Peyton Manning or even Matt Ryan. If you go into it with that mindset, you will miss out on some good quarterbacks. He doesn't have to be those guys. If he is the best he can be, that's going to be pretty darned good.

"

A full offseason for Bortles and another high first-round pick—I expect it will be spent on a pass-rusher like Nebraska's Randy Gregory or Missouri's Shane Ray—will put the Jaguars right about in the same situation the Bills were coming into the 2014 season. The defense, while not as potentially dominant as Buffalo's, should be good. 

It will be all on Bortles and the young receiving corps to step up and prove that they are able to lead this offense to glory. You'll recall that this did not work out so well for the Bills, and in fact led to things like "Kyle Orton, midseason savior." 

Bortles definitely has better pedigree than Manuel did. Whether he'll reach his upside will determine much about the Jaguars' future. I, personally, am as unsure about projecting Bortles forward as anything I've ever tried to forecast. The important thing, for now, is that he'll continue to be given that chance. 

Really, a Team Would Intentionally Go into the Season with Zach Mettenberger?

I know, this sounds completely bonkers to me, too. But here we are. 

ESPN's Paul Kuharsky advanced this thought in a piece breaking down Mettenberger's rookie season. In a piece that John Glennon did for The Tennessean, ESPN analyst Ron Jaworski told the paper that he thought "Zach will be the quarterback for a long time in Tennessee."

With all due respect to those men, I think allowing Mettenberger to keep Tennessee from drafting a quarterback would be a decision the Titans could regret for seasons to come. I can see why this is happening—both head coach Ken Whisenhunt and general manager Ruston Webster are big on tools, and Mettenberger's height and arm strength fit the classic definitions of what they are looking for.

At the same time, Mettenberger has so many flaws as to make his arm talent pointless. Mettenberger's arm is like painting the Sistine Chapel under an abandoned bridge in Detroit; sure, it's pretty, but it does little to change the surrounding problems.

For Tennessee to advance forward with Mettenberger given the flashing alarm signals—his tape, his pedigree, his results—would be pure lunacy. I'd rather fire Webster and Whisenhunt than pass on Mariota at the No. 1 pick if I owned the Titans.

But don't put pure lunacy past the Titans at this point. A team needs to have the No. 1 pick in the right circumstances and with the right timing, and this is exactly the wrong time for the Titans to potentially draw it. Owner Tommy Smith is still getting his feet wet, and Wingus and Dingus have shown us very little since Whisenhunt rode Kurt Warner to a Super Bowl that shows us they know what they're doing. 

I don't put it past them that they'd pass on Mariota and roll with Mettenberger, because I think the game that they are trying to win exists in the past. 

Rivers McCown is the AFC South lead writer for Bleacher Report and the co-host of the Three-Cone Drill podcast. His work has also appeared on Football Outsiders and ESPN.com. Follow him on Twitter at @riversmccown.