Quote:I was shocked to see the negativity on the board this morning when I logged in. While I will admit that I was as appalled as anyone with regards to our first half and even went as far to start a post at halftime that was directed at Jags ownership encouraging them to fire Gus Bradley,  I am now completely 100% back on board with this team and Coach Gus Bradley after a valiant and heroic second half effort last night. You cannot fault the Jags players and coaches for being a little nervous - the jitters clearly showed early and I attribute that to being on the NBC Sunday night big stage, which was unchartered territory for almost everyone on this Jags roster. Penalties, fumbles and dropped passes were not a sign of an undisciplined or bad team as many on this board have indicated, rather the sign of a nervous team. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when Coach Bradley gave what obviously was an epic and impassioned speech at halftime,this of course after huddling with his impressive coaching staff and making key adjustments that turned out to be the difference in the game. Our amazing defensive depth was sensational to witness - 22 Jaguar players with tackles! The astute football fan will notice that the Bengals did not score in the last 28 minutes and 56 seconds which is an indisputable sign that our defensive depth clearly wore out the Bengals offense. Now that we have got the jitters out of the way, we can focus on just playing a little football and getting to 12 to 13 wins. 

 

It's pretty clear that we will not lose a divisional game. Our talent level outside of our place-kickers  Myers and Ficken, neither of which will ever be as good as Scobee was, is significantly better than everyone else in our division. With the addition of Monte Kiffin to our defensive staff, we now without question have the best coaching staff in the division. This right here gets us to 6-0. We will use the momentum of our win over an extremely over rated Green Bay team to beat San Diego in week two, and then destroy an undermanned Baltimore team at home in week 3 at home. This is an easy 9 wins. The only sure fire loss on our schedule is of course Oakland at home. We can't and won't beat a Jack Del Rio coached team in Jacksonville. While Jack Del Rio taught our proud franchise everything that we know, he did not teach us everything that he knows. After coaching in Jacksonville for so long and being so familiar with our personnel, I think we can all agree that this is a loss - there's just no way around it. This puts us at 9-1, leaving us six games that we will have a 50/50 chance in. Using the logic that we will win at least 50% of the 50/50 games, this puts us at worst at 12-4, which is right where we should be three years into the Bradley era.  

 

Last nights comeback was nothing short of startling, breathtaking and astounding. Startling because everyone had given up on this game, breathtaking in which the comeback occurred and astounding because this just showed how good we can be.  I cannot wait to just sit back and enjoy this ride in what will become to be known as #2016TheYearofTheJag!

I'm glad the second half made you feel optimistic, but those weren't the starters playing the second half. I've been telling fans on this message board not to become overly negative about the team based on what they've observed during the pre-season. I should also point out that developing over confidence in the team based on observations during the pre-season is equally unjustified. 

 

The only thing we can reliably say about our team right now is that they have acquired players who (on paper) look to be upgrades from what we've had on defense. Will they 'pan out'? We don't know yet and won't know until after a few regular season games. Pre-season games are just glorified practice games for the starters and live try-outs for the players who are in question for the roster. They really aren't the most reliable means of accessing the viability of our current roster. Only regular season games will do that, for better or worse. The fact of the matter is that the best Dave can do as a GM is to make an educated guess about players based on past performance.... performance that may or may not have been at a professional level of competition.

 

Let's hope that the team can live up to highest expectations this season (but lets not expect more than at least a .500 season this year either).

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