Last year guard Andrew Norwell signed a five-year, $66.5 million contract with the Jaguars, which at the time made him the highest-paid guard in the league. The return on the Jaguars’ investment was not good.
Norwell missed five games with injuries, didn’t play particularly well in the games he did play, and admitted that he had a poor first year in Jacksonville.
“It’s no excuse, but it wasn’t my healthiest season,” Norwell said, via the Florida Times-Union. “I battled through it and ultimately had a significant injury there and that ended my season. I was very disappointed. I’m not going to let my teammates down like that again.”
Norwell had been a first-team All-Pro with the Panthers in 2017 before signing with the Jaguars in 2018, and he says he’s still that same player if he’s healthy.
“I was my same self,” he said. “I just struggled through some injuries the whole year. I really just couldn’t get healthy. I wasn’t practicing consistently every week. It was just pretty tough on me. You know what? That’s why you fall back on your fundamentals and work hard. What got me here, you just fall back on that.”
Getting Norwell healthy will go a long way toward getting the Jaguars back to where they want to be.
