Louisville quarterback Teddy Bridgewater, whose stock reportedly has dropped, will be meeting with the Houston Texans and Jacksonville Jaguars within the next week.
Bridgewater will meet with the Jaguars on Saturday and with the Texans next week, ESPN.com reports. It will be his second meeting with the Jaguars.
Houston picks first and Jacksonville third in the first round; Houston also picks first and the Jaguars seventh in the second round, which sets up even more draft speculation about Bridgewater, who at one time was seen as the quarterback most likely to come off the board first.
It's basically impossible to see the Texans taking him at No. 1 -- they have been more closely associated with South Carolina defensive end Jadeveon Clowney as well as quarterbacks Blake Bortles of UCF and Johnny Manziel of Texas A&M -- but Bridgewater going with the No. 1 pick in the second round makes a ton of sense for the Texans. If he is there, of course.
Jacksonville taking him at No. 3 seems a longshot, too, but far less of one than Bridgewater going first overall. Bridgewater's meeting with the Jaguars will be his second, and coach Gus Bradley led a Jaguars contingent at Bridgewater's pro day.
The possibility also exists that if Bridgewater does fall into the 20s, the Texans and Jaguars -- using their early picks in Round 2 as collateral -- could try to trade for a pick late in the first round to grab him. San Diego, which picks 25th, was a team that NFL Media draft analyst Daniel Jeremiah specifically mentioned Thursday as a team that might be willing to trade its first-round pick. Jeremiah noted that the Chargers pick right ahead of the quarterback-needy Browns. Cleveland also picks No. 4 in the first round, but conventional wisdom has them bypassing a quarterback at that spot.
"If the Browns don't go quarterback at No. 4, I think a lot of people are going to anticipate them going quarterback at 26," Jeremiah said during a teleconference. "Maybe some of those teams picking at the top of Round 2 who didn't go quarterback early might want to leapfrog in front of the Browns if a Teddy Bridgewater is there or Derek Carr is there, and maybe you're the Chargers and you have a chance to get back. ... I think the Chargers will be a prime candidate to get out of there."
It's extremely likely that Houston and Jacksonville take quarterbacks in this draft. Both signed veterans to serve, presumably, as stop-gap starters; the Texans brought in Ryan Fitzpatrick and the Jaguars re-signed Chad Henne. Neither is a long-term solution, which leads to the question of in which round do the Jaguars and Texans go quarterback shopping in May.
Mike Huguenin can be reached at mike.huguenin@nfl.com. You also can follow him on Twitter @MikeHuguenin.
