Quote:This week

 

What will happen: Gus and Dave preach the team must have consistency to win. They have experienced a lot of growing pains but there have been a lot of positives too and the like the direction the team is headed. All assistant coaches stay.

 

Local media reaction: Consistency is important. The worst thing that you can do to a young team is change coaches every year. The team is making a smart move.

 

Free agency

 

What will happen: After signing no "top tier" free agents, the team loads up on "diamond in the rough" types. Gus and Dave mention how they want guys who will come in and compete.

 

Local media reaction: Free agency is fool's gold anyway. I mean look how many guys on Green Bay and Seattle are homegrown and they are great teams. The team doesn't want another Jerry Porter. I think (insert bargain free agent name) could be "another Sen'Derrick Marks. The team is making smart moves.

 

Vegas odds for 2015 released

 

What will happen: Jaguars will open as the worst Super Bowl odds in the league and the lowest over/under for victories.

 

Local media reaction: After what the team did in free agency, I can't believe they still have the worst odds. There is no way they are only going to win less than 5 games.

Actually, I'm pretty much on board with this with a few exceptions:

*I think we will keep most of the coaches, but we need a new offensive line coach and special teams coach. Replacing those two won't create disruption for the bulk of the team.

*I've no doubt that Dave would love to sign a mega-star free agent who could come in and massively accelerate the positive development on this team. Problem; such an animal doesn't exist in f/a. free agents are players who other teams, for one reason or another, no longer want to keep. Consider the implication of that... you don't grow your team by using other teams 'cast offs'. They are at best 'stop gaps' and that's all.

*I suspect that the Jags won't win the 'least likely to reach the super bowl' designation from 'Vegas in 2015. In spite of the last two painful seasons, I think the team will have reached the point of 'turning the corner' after this off season and will be able to produce at least a 6-10 record next season. I know that there were plenty of well intended folks around who thought we would reach the .500 mark this season. Those were unrealistic expectations for this season given what was done to the roster when Dave got here.

There's reason to think that this team can do better next season. The bulk of these guys will no longer be 'rookies'. They will now be familiar with the offensive and defensive schemes. Most of the r o a d players (Retired On Active Duty) should be gone before next season, along with those players who clearly aren't cutting it. I've no doubt that as bad as the offensive line was this season that Dave will address key positions in both f/a and the draft. He likely won't get a 'star' f/a offensive lineman, but we can hopefully get someone with size and experience to at least bring a certain amount of consistency to the line. But we will still lean on the draft for long term development. Since we won't have the #1 pick this year, this will be a chance to see how good Dave really is in picking in the draft.

As I already said, there's reason to think that this team can do better next season. After all, they really don't have much room to do significantly worse and still expect Gus to be here at seasons end.

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