I was thinking about who really got better this year and find it to struggle to think about names. It seems across the board this team massively regressed. Injury no doubt played a massive role in the decline of the team but it gets deeper than that.
Dede Westbrook and Josh Lamnbo are the only two players I believe that improved from the 2017 jags roster to the 2018. It is troubling to see such a massive decline in many returning players.
Westbrook is about it. Lots of players took a step back and several remained on course.
Jarrod Wilson did a nice job stepping in at safety from the bench - so I'd give him an honorable mention since he was relegated to ST and dime package stuff last year.
Ngakoue and Campbell I feel improved even more this year because of how rough this season was. They still showed a lot of fire and grit out there. Jackson turned it on late too after they started benching him. Pretty bummed out they'll more than likely move on from him in the off season. But damn near every year that he's been here he's seemed to produce more and more. Even more than he ever did at Denver. I could say the same for Ramsey.
Ramsey has had quite a few good games already in his career. But he looked truly ELITE this year when they were playing against Pittsburgh. It's a shame we couldn't close that game out. But Ramsey's performance in that game was outstanding. He was also more than likely hampered all year with a bum ankle. This defense in general kept it up pretty well. Myles Jack got much, much better in pass coverage. He also toned down a lot of his errors from last year with the personal foul flags thrown in his general direction.
Offensively I agree with you. The only bright spot was Dede Westbrook. He showed a ton of toughness this year. Poor guy was getting lit up left and right every other game and he just kept picking himself up and getting back to work. I think he'll get better down the road. Just need to keep adding some competition to the position. But he seems like he'll be in the mix for years to come.
I feel like most are overlooking Abry in the middle. That dude made good use of his expanded role. He was stout and took quite a few double teams. His big [BLEEP] even chased down the RB on multiple occasions. He certainly improved!
(01-04-2019, 07:06 PM)B2hibry Wrote: [ -> ]I feel like most are overlooking Abry in the middle. That dude made good use of his expanded role. He was stout and took quite a few double teams. His big [BLEEP] even chased down the RB on multiple occasions. He certainly improved!
Good call. He stepped it up.
(01-04-2019, 07:06 PM)B2hibry Wrote: [ -> ]I feel like most are overlooking Abry in the middle. That dude made good use of his expanded role. He was stout and took quite a few double teams. His big [BLEEP] even chased down the RB on multiple occasions. He certainly improved!
Yea, I'd say Abry and Dede. There wasn't really any improvements around any other players. Campbell stayed on par with last year for the most part. We all could name tons of players who went backwards though. Anybody going to the draft this year? lol
I will give Cooke the early nod for improving 2018 to 2019. He definitely improved as the season wore on and we had an exceedingly high number of punts. His kick offs were nice as well.
Dareus and Dede for me. I hope they find a way to keep Dareus on the roster.
We should include players who regressed the most too. What the heck happened to Keelan Cole? He looked like a bonafide scrub rest of season after he made that one handed catch against Pats. Telvin looked like he regressed a bunch too.
I think Yeldon deserves a shout. Up until our entire line got tanked I was regularly calling him our offensive MVP. Lots of important plays when we needed em
(01-04-2019, 11:38 PM)JackCity Wrote: [ -> ]I think Yeldon deserves a shout. Up until our entire line got tanked I was regularly calling him our offensive MVP. Lots of important plays when we needed em
I actually thought he was playing on this same level last year. (even though folks were still oddly hating on the guy then) He just wasn't being featured enough.
He went from 49 attempts in 2017 to 104 in 2018. His average carry was better in 2017 - but you have to figure the line into that.
I'm trying to think of some names not yet brought up...
I haven't really focused on him, but AJ Cann was healthy all year, kept his starting gig throughout, and despite the team racking up penalties we rarely heard his name called on any.
O'Shaugnessy had some nice moments where I felt overall he looked better than last year.
Gipson I felt improved. He did a great job last year as well but a few times he gave up an explosive play where this year I don't think he did at all.
Smoot improved considerably.
That's all I got.
Dede for sure. Harrison on defense. He did solid taking over as the starter.
If you'd flipped the script we'd have an epic thread on our hands...
Though not with us previously Hayden played well outside the injured weeks.
A few of the rookies improved over the season. Chark seemed to have a bit more confidence and trying to make plays as the season went on, sadly as the passing game was dying. Dede was probably the best player on O but plenty of room to improve.
Bryan looked better by week 17 but that D line is good, he needs to reach their level. Harrison did OK and will probably be starting next year. Hayden looked a solid nickel corner.
On the downside, what happened to Jack this year? So invisible and he seemed to struggle with the extra responsibility. Bouye was poor this year, got beat a lot and a lot of ways.
I thought jack was the jags best linebacker this year, and to me it was telvin smith that was on the decline this year except he started to player better late in the year.
(01-05-2019, 04:52 PM)Mdjagsfan1989 Wrote: [ -> ]I thought jack was the jags best linebacker this year, and to me it was telvin smith that was on the decline this year except he started to player better late in the year.
They both had games displaying poor gap fits against the run and they both had moments of poor coverage, but Telvin was much worse in both aspects. Jack didn't really decline in my estimation - he just had to play the run this year without Poz coming in. It's still a challenge for him sometimes.
(01-05-2019, 04:55 PM)NYC4jags Wrote: [ -> ] (01-05-2019, 04:52 PM)Mdjagsfan1989 Wrote: [ -> ]I thought jack was the jags best linebacker this year, and to me it was telvin smith that was on the decline this year except he started to player better late in the year.
They both had games displaying poor gap fits against the run and they both had moments of poor coverage, but Telvin was much worse in both aspects. Jack didn't really decline in my estimation - he just had to play the run this year without Poz coming in. It's still a challenge for him sometimes.
Jack was 1 of only 3 Defensive players (the other 2 were S Malcolm Jenkins and S Justin Simmons) in the entire league to play 100% of his team's Defensive snaps.
(01-05-2019, 04:55 PM)NYC4jags Wrote: [ -> ] (01-05-2019, 04:52 PM)Mdjagsfan1989 Wrote: [ -> ]I thought jack was the jags best linebacker this year, and to me it was telvin smith that was on the decline this year except he started to player better late in the year.
They both had games displaying poor gap fits against the run and they both had moments of poor coverage, but Telvin was much worse in both aspects. Jack didn't really decline in my estimation - he just had to play the run this year without Poz coming in. It's still a challenge for him sometimes.
I felt we used him a lot more in coverage and didn't really blitz him. Last year we played a lot of 4-3 with Telvin and Jack on the outside. They matched up well with TE's and could cover most routes and RB's in the flat or screens. It also gave us extra cover on the edges with their speed and we could blitz them and cause havoc trying to pick everyone up.
This year we seemed to play a lot more nickel and that meant we mainly used Telvin and Jack in zone coverages which limit your ability to make plays. They often got matchuped on a slot WR which they struggled with and the whole D really seemed to struggle with some of the zone schemes for a lot of the season. I hope we can add another LB this year so we can play a bit more of the 4-3 with Telvin and Myles on the edge.
(01-05-2019, 05:31 PM)JagFan81 Wrote: [ -> ] (01-05-2019, 04:55 PM)NYC4jags Wrote: [ -> ]They both had games displaying poor gap fits against the run and they both had moments of poor coverage, but Telvin was much worse in both aspects. Jack didn't really decline in my estimation - he just had to play the run this year without Poz coming in. It's still a challenge for him sometimes.
I felt we used him a lot more in coverage and didn't really blitz him. Last year we played a lot of 4-3 with Telvin and Jack on the outside. They matched up well with TE's and could cover most routes and RB's in the flat or screens. It also gave us extra cover on the edges with their speed and we could blitz them and cause havoc trying to pick everyone up.
This year we seemed to play a lot more nickel and that meant we mainly used Telvin and Jack in zone coverages which limit your ability to make plays. They often got matchuped on a slot WR which they struggled with and the whole D really seemed to struggle with some of the zone schemes for a lot of the season. I hope we can add another LB this year so we can play a bit more of the 4-3 with Telvin and Myles on the edge.
It's common for teams to play in nickel around 60-70% of the time now due to the focus most offenses have chosen.
The Jags are no different.
And I'd venture a guess that they weren't in nickel much more in 2018 than 2017.
Two things changed:
- 1 - Jack was out there in the middle for all of the snaps, both base and nickel this year. Last year Poz played base downs.
- 2 - Offensive coordinators got wise to some effective ways to force Smith and Jack into mismatches in coverage.
I think Jack was actually fine in coverage (for a LB) on the overall in 2018. Smith was caught out of position quite often, either biting on run fakes or simply keying on the wrong offensive player instead of being disciplined in his zone.