Quote:The only reason to be pessimistic is our 2016 schedule. Our defense will get much better in March (free agency) and April (the draft). That is after Sen'Derrick Marks and Dante Fowler return to practice at 100%. How can we take a step backwards with all of the upcoming improvements on defense?

No... again, there are more reasons than just the schedule to be pessimistic about the 2016 season. For starters, you are assuming that free agency and draft acquisitions will make the team 'much better'. In fact, the history of this team shows that rookies seldom help the team very much in their rookie season. This team also has a well established history of let downs from free agency. So your assumption that the draft and free agency will get our defense 'much better' is baseless.

 

Dante Fowler will be playing his rookie season this year; again, it is the exception for rookies to step in and have a big positive impact right away. Generally, they require at least a year or two before they start becoming productive. There are exceptions to this of course, but generally that's the way it goes. We don't know what to expect from Marks...maybe he'll play well...maybe he won't. I sure wouldn't go betting your savings on him being an impact player now though.

 

Certainly, the team is going to put forth maximum effort to improve the defense. But guess what... every other team in the NFL is also going to be trying to improve their defense too if they can. All we can hope for next season is that we will have hopefully stopped wasting time on guys on defense who have demonstrated that they are a waste of time on the Jaguars roster. We will have some new people here via f/a and the draft who need to step in right away and start developing and show us what they can do.

 

...but it ain't gonna happen in the course of just one off season. We're that bad and in that deep of a player 'hole' on defense. Give it a year or two...then we'll see. I personally don't think Gus ever had a chance here as the Jags never had the personnel on the field to successfully run Gus's defense. He will be gone before that happens (if ever). He'll make a decent defensive coordinator some where else, but he was just too inflexible about the defense here to be an effective HC.

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