Quote:The 2 glaring things wrong with the Jaguar Franchise right now are HC and QB, the 2 most important pieces of any NFL Franchise.

 

The HC is historically bad and the QB is ranked at, or near, the bottom of most of the important QB stats, has a long wind up which is incredibly inaccurate and takes too much time, and throws an alarming number of interceptions and pick 6's.

 

Also, even though they have picked in the top 5 of the NFL draft for several years in a row now, they have missed on every one of those picks in finding a real game changing NFL Pro bowl type player. (We'll see how Ramsey turns out).

 

Those are the top reasons why the Jaguars are in the state they are in.

Quite true. On the one hand, you have Gus Bradley, who has failed to prepare the players to play winning NFL football. As a former defensive coordinator with the former world champ seahawks, he has tried to run that style defense here.... and it has failed miserably. Rather than use the strengths of the players he has, he has imposed the system that he is most familiar with... the result of which has been to set our players up for failure.

A winning coach will utilize the strengths of his players rather than impose a plan that his players aren't good at. Result; Gus Bradley is now one of the losing-est coaches in the history of the NFL. What professional players (who actually cares about winning) wants to listen to the losing-est coach in the history of the NFL?

 

Then you have Blake Bortles. He was drafted 3rd overall with known weaknesses in his fundamental passing skills. What weakness you say?

 

*he has a long 'baseball pitcher style' wind up before he passes the ball. It's too slow and sets him up to have the ball knocked out of his hand.

*if you observe Blake, you will notice that, more often than not, he stares down his intended target almost from the moment of the snap. This gives the defenders an easy key to follow. No wonder our receivers have trouble getting separation!

*His throwing style (the aforementioned 'baseball windup') and his footwork tend to lead to a wobbly, sloppy looking pass. A wobbly pass compared to a tight spiral will almost always have less velocity and be more inaccurate.

*he tends to overlook wide-open receivers in favor of his 'preferred' target of Allen Robinson. This leads to picks, and making himself and Allen Robinson look bad.

 

Now to be certain, the receivers haven't done Blake many favors in view of the number of dropped passes that have occurred this season already. If you already have an inaccurate quarterback and add receiver drops to that mix the outcome isn't going to be pretty; interceptions and 'pick sixes' become the order of the day... and that's just what Blake has been specializing in this season. 

 

It is thought by some that Bortles may have a shoulder injury that is causing the problems. If that is so, then it once again it comes back to the head coach allowing him to stay in the game instead of sitting him and allowing him to heal... or at least not make his resume look worse. We're already at 2-10 so what do we have to lose by letting the backups play? Nothing.

 

So who's fault is it that we're in this situation? IMHO, Dave Caldwell put us in this mess primarily due to retaining Gus Bradley when it became clear he wasn't getting the job done, and in selecting Blake Bortles 3rd over all. Bortles has proven he was not deserving of such a high draft pick and since it was known prior to his selection that he has issues with his passing skills... well, it was a major blunder to select him so high. Rather than admit his mistakes and try to fix them, Dave has allowed the situation to degenerate to this sorry state. 

 

I can see Dave getting a 'mulligan' for his selection of Gus... even his selection of Bortles. But taken together, and then not moving on from them when it had become clear they were at the heart of the problems.... almost unforgivable.

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