JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The Jacksonville Jaguars helped out quarterback Trevor Lawrence in free agency. Now it’s time to do the same for outside linebacker Josh Allen.

General manager Trent Baalke signed two receivers, a tight end, and one of the league’s better interior offensive lineman in March, but the addition of the NFL’s leading tackler in linebacker Foyesade Oluokun and defensive tackle Folorunso Fatukasi won’t improve the pass rush.

And while Baalke and head coach Doug Pederson wouldn’t say if that’s the team’s biggest need heading into the draft … it’s the team’s biggest need.

Even after the Jaguars signed defensive end Arden Key earlier this week. Key had the best season of his career in 2021 (6.5 sacks), but he is not an impact pass-rusher (he has just 9.5 sacks in 54 career games) and played only 35% of the San Francisco 49ers' defensive snaps. Key is an upgrade from linebacker K'Lavon Chaisson, who was the 20th overall pick in 2020 and has just two sacks in 31 career games, at the other outside linebacker spot opposite Allen, but this doesn't come close to solving the Jaguars' edge rusher issue.

The Jaguars sacked opposing quarterbacks only 32 times last season, and only eight teams had fewer. Opposing quarterbacks completed a league-high 64.9% of their passes, and the Jaguars intercepted just seven passes (the Las Vegas Raiders had a league-low six). Allen led the Jaguars with 7.5 sacks, and Dawuane Smoot had six last season, but that’s not going to cut it in a conference loaded with the league’s great young quarterbacks – and especially in a season in which the Jaguars play the AFC West.

Adding an edge rusher or two should be the Jaguars’ No. 1 priority in the draft, and since they have the first overall pick again, they could do it right away with Michigan defensive end Aidan Hutchinson, the 2021 Heisman Trophy runner-up and winner of the Rotary Lombardi Award given to the lineman of the year. It seems to be the general consensus among the latest mock drafts that the Jaguars will do that.

It is regarded as a deep group of pass-rushers, however, so the Jaguars could opt to take an offensive tackle (Evan Neal or Ikem Ekwonu) and address edge rusher with one of the other three picks they have in the top 70.

“You’ve got to take the player that you think is the best fit for the organization as a whole and makes the biggest difference,” Baalke said. “And if that’s the offensive tackle position, you do it. If it’s edge rusher, you do it. I’ve always been a believer in 'go big or go home.' This draft has a lot of unique players in it, and there may not be that clear No. 1, but there’s a lot of very good football players at the top of this draft that, we’re going to have, obviously being in position No. 1, our pick of those players.”

It doesn’t matter when the Jaguars draft an edge rusher. They just have to get Allen some help. He had his best season as a rookie when he had Calais Campbell and Yannick Ngakoue on the field with him, but since recording 10.5 sacks in 2019, he has just 10 sacks in 24 games (he missed eight games in 2020 with a knee injury). Smoot has developed into a solid player, with 17.5 sacks in the past three seasons, but that’s not enough.

The switch to a 3-4 defense last season moved Allen back to outside linebacker, which is the position at which he thrived in college at Kentucky. He did have some big games – two sacks and six tackles against Seattle; a sack, eight solo tackles, an interception, and a fumble recovery against Buffalo; and two sacks against Indianapolis – but wasn’t consistently impactful. Teams were able to concentrate on minimizing him as a rusher because there wasn’t anyone else about which teams worried.

Hutchinson could be that player. He had 14 sacks, 16.5 tackles for loss, three pass breakups and two forced fumbles last season to help the Wolverines win the Big Ten and make the College Football Playoff. Baalke is naturally being coy about what the Jaguars’ draft plans are, but he’s said numerous times he loves big guys.

“I think any time you can add a pressure player to your team on the defensive side – if you look at the track record in San Francisco with what we did there relative to the edge pressure [when he was the 49ers' GM], that’s a positive,” Baalke said. “This draft happens to be a good draft for that. I think there’s going to be depth into the second and even third round in acquiring those type of players.”

Allen is definitely one of the Jaguars’ core players, and the team is almost certainly going to exercise the fifth-year option on the 2019 No. 7 overall pick (the deadline to do so is May 2). But as with Lawrence, the Jaguars need to put better talent around him to allow him to flourish.

It doesn’t really matter when the help comes – first round with Hutchinson or the second or third rounds – just that the Jaguars get him some.