JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- The Jacksonville Jaguars have something in common with the Dallas Cowboys -- other than the fact that neither of those teams are playing Sunday night.
The Jaguars and Cowboys tied for 10th in ESPN Insider Mel Kiper Jr.'s rankings of the top 10 rookie classes in terms of winning contributions. Green Bay's rookie class, which included receiver Davante Adams and safety Ha Ha Clinton-Dix, topped the rankings. There were a total of four AFC teams in the rankings (Baltimore, Oakland Cleveland, and Jacksonville).
Kiper was impressed with the production of the Jaguars' nine-member draft class, but because the Jaguars won just three games, it's hard to know how much those players would have produced had they been on another team. He wrote: "In that sense, you could argue the rookies were part of the problem, not part of the solution. (That's not a shot at the Jags; it's just reality that playing rookies is often necessity, not the plan.)"
Still, the Jaguars' 2014 draft class is in rare company. All nine played in at least five games and eight started at least one game. According to Elias Sports Bureau, the last team that selected nine players in the draft and had all of them play in at least five games as rookies was Indianapolis in 2008: G Mike Pollak, LB Philip Wheeler, TE Jacob Tamme, DE Marcus Howard, TE Tom Santi, C Steve Justice, RB Mike Hart, WR Pierre Garcon and C Jamey Richard.
