I am dismayed at the level of negativity on this message board. There is absolutely no shame in losing to Carolina as they have clearly established themselves as one of the favorites in the NF with Sundays win. Non Divisional Games really don't matter and games out of conference even matter less so I'm already over Sundays loss. The mistakes that we made are correctable, and this loss under no circumstances can be blamed on the players, who gave just a fabulous effort, or the coaching staff who had a masterful game plan. Culpability goes far beyond the players and coaches and I think it's time to point out the Pink Elephants in the room, so we can move on and get ready for our crucial Ponce De Leon Cup Match Up with Miami this Sunday.

 

You cannot argue with placing the blame on the following people/parties:

 

David Cadwell: The Jaguars GM severely damaged not just one team, but two teams when he traded Josh Scobee away to the Steelers. Without Scobee, the Jags have no internal leadership and now really struggle to score. With Scobee, the Steelers now have a kicker  who is having great difficulty connecting with a franchise that has little history and a fan base with extremely low expectations. The poor guy is just really home sick and bored. Scobee is at his best when things matter and Myers is obviously at his worst when things matter as he cost us the game single handedly on Sunday with his errant kicking. I'm surprised Mr. Cadwell did not think through this more accurately and if he had, we would be sitting at 1-0 and first place in the NFL instead of 0-1 and in second place in the NFL.

 

It would be irresponsible to not point out the role that the Jacksonville Chamber of commerce has had in the Jags Struggles the past few years, not to mention specifically this past Sunday. If Chamber Chair John Delaney and his staff would focus on growing the population of Jacksonvlile 20% from 832,323 people to 998, 876.6, it would solve the issues of our lack of home field advantage during our home games. Think about it this way, if the chamber did their job and truly promoted the city, and the city of Jacksonville were to add 166,000 new people, and 40% of the new 166,000 people became die hard Jags fans (approx. 66,400) we could nearly sell out the stadium each week with the new bodies alone. At a minimum, it would create a supply and demand scenario for tickets that would give us the home field advantage we are sorely lacking. It must be depressing for the players to look up in the stands midway through the first half, see thousands of empty seats and think to themselves "not only are we playing our opponent, but we are playing the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce as well."  With Miami coming to town this weekend for a battle of supremacy in the "Ponce De Leon Cup" a raucous crowd will be on hand - the Chamber must capitalize to the people in Tampa and Miami to convince them to pack up and move to a real city with a real football team. 

 

I"ve kept my mouth shut on President Mark Lamping for long enough, but I just can't any longer. As the president, it is his job to provide an info structure in which his employees can succeed. It is Lamping who hired our analytics department and the analytics department failing to communicate with Jaguars defensive coordinator Bob Babich that Cam Newton was a threat to run on third down really, really hurt us in the second half on Sunday. The apparent lack of communication between the different divisions inside the Jags organization is just mind boggling and shows a lack of leadership. Furthermore, Lamping should have created a "Director of Tackling" position but failed to do so. Kudo's to the Jags Defensive Staff for having our players in the right position the entire game on Sunday and non  kudos to Lamping for failing to invest in enough coaches to allow our staff to be successful. This would be like opening a Lexus dealership (the Jags players and coaches being the Lexus) and then not having any sales people (the lack of sales people being the mindset of Lamping) to sell the cars. 

 

The players and coaches clearly have a lot to overcome, but I believe in them. Win this week and we have three winnable road games in a row and we are only one game out of where I predicted we would be after 5 games at 4-1.

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