Jacksonville Jaguars 2012 Thread

[JaxRed]

The 2012 season for the Jags really started Nov 29th, 2011 when one single day brought the firing of Jack Del Rio and the announcement of a new owner in Shad Khan.

Previous owner Wayne Weaver was an honorable man doing his best, but the new ownership brought a new spark to the franchise. Khan paid cash for the team, and vowed to do whatever it took to make Jacksonville a premier franchise. With his wavy black hair and prominent moustache, he has become one of the faces of the franchise, a role Weaver was reluctant to assume.

From the first day he talked to the media, he said he wanted to increase the Jags exposure and make them an international brand. We've seen the steps towards this recently. When Hard Knocks was looking for a team, Khan stepped up and publicly volunteereed. When the NFL was looking for a new "Home Team" in London, the Jags signed on for 4 years. This week Khan was at practice with the 60 minutes crew filming him for a piece that will run this fall.


Already, Khan has spent 3 million to upgrade the Jags locker room, so much so that it may be the best Locker room in the NFL now

Check it out:

http://www.jaguars.com/media-gallery...f-42913d28bd1b


The Stadium also got a new $2 million dollar sound system for this year as part of a 7.5 million dollar sprucing up. New Video screens are coming next year.



So lets talk about what went wrong for the Jags last year and how things stand this year:

Problem 1. Coaching: If anyone recalls my recaps of last years games before he got fired, we threw away a lot of chances to win games with bad coaching decisions (clock mangagement, etc.) and and chaotic play that was indicative of bad coaching.

It wasn't till after Del Rio got fired, and in training camp this year when reporters started talking about what a train wreck the last Del Rio coaching season had been. Del Rio had fired 19 assistant coaches in his tenure, and nobody wanted to work for him based on that, and the fact he was considered to be a lame duck.

Example: QB Coach Mike Shula leaves for another organization after 2010 season. Jags hire Todd Monken as new QB coach. A few weeks later Monken gets a better offer so he also departs. Del Rio moves the WR Coach Sheppard to be QB coach, and names the Quality Control Coach to be WR coach.

On his first day as interim head coach, Defensive Coordintor Mel Tucker fired recievers coach JOhnny Cox, moved the QB Coach to WR coach where he belonged and had Offensive Coordinator Dirk Koetter do double duty as QB Coach.


With Shad Kahn talking about spending whatever it took, some local people speculated on big name coaches such as Bill Cowher, Jeff Fischer or John Gruden coming to town, so intially there was a little disapointment with the hiring of Mike Mularkey who had a 2 year previous gig as Buffalo's head coach from 2004-2005. He took Buffalo to a wining record in 2004, their first in 5 years. The interesting thing about his tenure was that he wasn't fired. He resigned. Nobody resigns from being a head coach. Retire, sure.... but just resign? Seems that management had been making the key decisions for him in 2005 and he wouldn't work under those conditions. Buffalo has had a losing record every year since.

It also seemed that Mularkey's decision to resign had kind of blackballed him. He got plenty of other jobs but no other head jobs. The Jags did talk to Cowher, but the call was initiated by Cowher and lasted for 90 minutes, and it consisted of Cowher selling the Jags on Mularkey.

And once you start listening to Mularkey, and getting a feel for the guy, you get a sense that this may be a real good hire. A guy that leaves no stone unturned. The first thing he did was reach out to Defensive Coordinator Mel Tucker who had been interim coach, and who had interviewed for the head job, and had an offer to be DC elsewhere, and convince him to stay. The two men hit it off, and when a reporter asked if it might be an uncomfortable relationship, Tucker said .."Whoever thought that doesn't understand me. I'm all in". And that's now the Jagsuars slogan for the season.

"All in".

Shad Khan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=uvrXYJHG9JE


And the respect shown by Cowher for Mularkey was shown by others also. Besides Tucker turning down another DC gig, Bob Bratkowski followed Mularkey here from Atlanta to become OC. Jerry Sullivan was a wide recievers coach with 40 years of experience. He retired after 2010 season but kept his hand in the game doing indivuidual tutoring with players like Laurent Robinson and Larry Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald tried to lure Sullivan to Arizona but Sullivan declined.

But when Mularkey was named Heach coach, he texted Mularkey and said he'd love to unretire and coach the Wide Recievers. And he now is.

Greg Olson a guy with a ton of experience is now the QB Coach.


Mike Mularkey

Jacksonville Jaguars - All In - Featuring Head Coach Mike Mularkey - YouTube



Problem 2: Blaine Gabbert

It's hard to argue that Gabbert wasn't the worst starting QB in the league last year. His completion percent was barely 50% and his 65.4 QB rating was the worst in the league. Other rookies such as Dalton and Newton were way more successful. So it's easy to say the Jags have a big hole at QB. (In fact many are saying that. Some pundits were saying that FA pickup Henne would be the QB by week 6.).


But let's keep in mind a few things in mind:

a) Gabbert was the youngest QB in NFL History to have started 14 games.
b) He never had a dedicated QB coach. His first QB coach was actually a Wide Reciever guy, and his second was also the OC.
c) The Jag receivers were terrible.
d) The Jags had some problems on the O-Line.
e) He had no off-season workouts or OTA's and was the 3rd string guy getting few reps until named the starter in Week 3.


So, the question was with A new head coach, a dedicated QB coach, a full off-season, better recievers, etc, etc. Would he be better? So far he looks WAY, WAY better. In 2 preseason games he is: 18/26 3 TD's O picks, and a QB rating of 126.1

Blaine Gabbert

Jaguars ALL IN: Blaine Gabbert - YouTube


Problem 3: Wide Recievers

Jacksonville had a terrible recieving crew in 2011. And little coaching. So, a new respected WR Coach was hired, and in Free Agency they Jags signed Laurent Robinson from the Cowboys. Robinson exploded from obscurity to prominence last year pulling in 54 catches for 858 yards and 11 TD's. Robinson was one of the people that Sullivan tutored in the lockout.

In addition, the Jags moved up in the draft and grabbed the consensus top Wide Reciever in the draft in Justin Blackmon out of OK State.

These moves allowed former top Jags receiever Mike Thomas to move to a slot receiever role where everyone agrees he is more well suited.


Problem 4: Pass rush.

The Jags have been increasing their pass rush since 2009 when they had just 14 sacks the entire season. They then went from 22 to 26 to 31 last year, but thet felt they needed more, and spent their #2 draft choice on DE Andre Branch out of Clemson. He has looked very good so far in camp

In Conclusion:

Don't assume the Jags are going to be bad this year. Every year a couple teams surprise and the Jags could be one this year. They were 8-8 before all the coaching choas, and more guys on injured reserve than any other team.

They had the 6th ranked defense, and added a big DE.

They have a vastly better coaching staff

They should have much better QB play

[JaxRed]

So..... Jags have a real telling game tomorrow. They are playing the Vikings. A very winnable game. Of course the Vikings are saying the same thing. And that's the deal, either team could easily win this game. We're going to see where things stand.

MoJo is back, but the Jags have already been hit a bit by the injury bug. They are a little short handed at LB and OL.

[camisadelgolf]

My plan for fantasy football is to start their opposing defenses as often as possible.

[KronoRed]

Del Rio would have been proud of that Defense

[JaxRed]

Well, in a gut wrenching game, the Jaguars were able to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. They lost a 3 point lead they had taken with 20 seconds to go.

It was the usual suspect in cases like this....bring so afraid of a big play burning you that you give up major yardage underneath. With the 20 seconds left to go, the Jags first "squib" kick, which let the Vikings be a little closer, and then they play prevent defense and give up enough yardage to give up game tieing field goal.

So.. let's talk about what went right. The most critical component for the Jags has to be the play of Blaine Gabbert who was the worst QB in the league in his rookie season. He continues to show improvement over last year (as he did in preseason) and had best best game ever according to the stats with a 96.0 rating and career best 260 yards passing. He has not thrown a pick yet in 2012.

LT Eugene Monroe is starting to become the stud LT the Jags envisioned when they drafted him. Last week he totally shut out sack leader Jared Allen.

Wide Receiver improvement showed up. Jags had one the worst (If not the worst) receiving corps last year.

The bad - still no big pressure on the QB from the DL. The Jags took DE Andre Branch in the 2nd round. They supposedly love what they see, but he didn't do anything in game 1. (DE's usually take a while to get going).

Poor game time management by coaches. In the last few minutes of the game, clock management was poor costing the Jags time. They needed to go to a hurry up offense sooner. And when you are on the last play of the game in overtime, needing 3 yards to stay alive.......a 35 yard pass play is not real smart.

So, now we head into a game that no one thinks the Jags will when. The big issue (as it was going into week 1) is health. Somehow we ended up the preseason REALLY beat up and it got worse in game 1.

The O-Line - Going into week 1, 4 OL are on IR for the year. Now for week 2, another is out for the game and 2 more are questionable. The Jags spent the week signing/cutting OL trying to find capable warm bodies on the street.

Linebacker Darryl Smith is out and Cornerback Derek Cox is a game time decision.

So, the Jags are being held together with duct tape.

Probable loss this week.

In off the field issues - Not sure if you know the league has 2 levels of attendance that count towards blackouts. A team can count the lower level but then they have to kick back some money to the league.

The Jags had previously stated they did not need or intend to go to the lower level. And then this week the Jags announced (as they do the home opener) that tickets are already at the point where the Jags will not have ANY blackouts in 2012. (This is the 3rd straight year with no blackouts).

[Sea Ray]

Originally Posted by JaxRed

So.. let's talk about what went right. The most critical component for the Jags has to be the play of Blaine Gabbert who was the worst QB in the league in his rookie season. He continues to show improvement over last year (as he did in preseason) and had best best game ever according to the stats with a 96.0 rating and career best 260 yards passing. He has not thrown a pick yet in 2012.

I agree and with that in mind the Jaguars are in big trouble. Gabbert couldn't have had a worse day yesterday:

The Jaguars ran just 38 plays, managed 52 yards passing and finished 0 for 9 on third down. It was worse than anything they did last season as the NFL's least productive offense.

"I'm not going to sit here and say I've got the answers for what went wrong today," Jaguars guard Uche Nwaneri said. "But clearly we weren't firing on all cylinders."

Blaine Gabbert looked like a rookie, hurrying throws, missing open receivers and showing little pocket presence. Gabbert completed 7 of 19 passes for 53 yards - his fewest yards in 16 games as a starter - and ended the day standing on the sideline with an ice pack on his left leg. He played one series in the fourth quarter before giving way to backup Chad Henne.

Coach Mike Mularkey said Gabbert "has a strain in the back of his leg" and was unsure if Gabbert will be able to play next week at Indianapolis.

Even before Gabbert's injury, Jacksonville totaled just 43 yards in the first half.

That's about as ugly as it gets. Granted Houston does look like a Super Bowl team at this point

[JaxRed]

The Jags got a butt whuppin' Sunday. A butt whipping is too kind a phrase for what happened. The OL injuries I discussed turned out to be the critical factor.

The offensive line could not protect the QB on passes and didn't open holes. That forced a bunch of 3 and outs, and the defense got tired and got scored upon.

I'm not going to be too critical of Gabbert based on that game. It was a train wreck and he had no time too throw.

But this game against Indy become huge. Big difference between 0-3 and 1-2 with a win being the last game.

The Jags look to be at least a little healthier. CB Derek Cox and DE Austen Lane are practicing and might play, as are 2 OL Bradfield and Britton. Our best LB Smith is still out.

[JaxRed]

It's funny, but after a miraculous win in a game they probably should have lost, the fans seem to be more concerned then when they lost a game they should have won.

The most critical element for the Jags is still health. They are SLOWLY getting better. Linebacker Smith will still be out. OL Britton and Bradfield are practicing, although Britton was limited. RB Jennings practiced. Austen Lane practicing.

Second most critical element is QB Gabbert -Despite throwing a beautiful pass to win the game, he did not look good again. So, as the OL returns to normalcy, we need to see Gabbert improve. Doesn't look like the same guy we saw in pre-season and 1st game.

[JaxRed]

Going into the Bengals game, all of the injured guys are back except LB smith. so this is as close to our regular team as we'll see for a while.

[Sea Ray]

Originally Posted by JaxRed

Going into the Bengals game, all of the injured guys are back except LB smith. so this is as close to our regular team as we'll see for a while.

Wish I could say the same for the Bengals. They'll struggle to field 2 healthy corners and we have to pray that Faine can play the whole game at C. If not then an UFA will be all that's left at that key position.

I expect a very close game

[JaxRed]

I know the feeling. 2 weeks ago our OL line included and UDFA and a guy who hadn't played in 4 years.

[Sea Ray]

After watching that game yesterday, I'd say the Jags are one of the worst teams in the league and a legitimate candidate for the #1 pick in April. May they beat out Cleveland for that honor.

[WMR]

I will be quite surprised if gabbert makes it as a starting qb in the nfl.

[Sea Ray]

Originally Posted by JaxRed

It's funny, but after a miraculous win in a game they probably should have lost, the fans seem to be more concerned then when they lost a game they should have won.

The most critical element for the Jags is still health. They are SLOWLY getting better. Linebacker Smith will still be out. OL Britton and Bradfield are practicing, although Britton was limited. RB Jennings practiced. Austen Lane practicing.

Britton should have stayed on the bench another week:

He was so dominant, in fact, that he forced the Jaguars to bench their returning start at left guard, Eben Britton after only 33 snaps. Accounting for five (1Ht, 4 Hu) of the eight pressures (2 Sk, 1 Ht, 5 Hu) that Britton yielded in only 22 pass blocks, Atkins was able to get to the inside of Britton far too easily. He didn’t go easy on Britton’s replacement either, and highlighted a weakness against the bullrush that Mike Brewster must work on if he isn’t to be a liability in the Jacksonville offensive line. All three of the pressures (2 Sk, 1 Hu) that Atkins recorded against Brewster came courtesy of the bullrush, as the undrafted rookie from Ohio State simply couldn’t cope with Atkins’ raw physicality. This is the highest individual game grade of Atkins’ career and should guarantee him a spot in our Team of the Week.

https://www.profootballfocus.com/blo...aguars-week-4/

[medford]

After seeing Bob Bratkowski's act here in Cincy, I don't think you're going to love his coordinating skills in Jacksonville. Granted its about baby steps for that team, and they don't have a ton of talent to work with, but I saw Blackmon with way too many 4-5 yard routes on receptions or "looks". Brat became way to predictable in the his playcalling by the end of his tenure. He'll give you some constancy that it sounds like you were looking for last season, but he'll only get you so far.