On a lighter note,  that,  combined with your screen names reminded me of Colts ILB Edwin Jackson's nickname,  which is a classic for a LB:   ' Pound Cake' !

Did you catch that story of how he got it?

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Looking to troll? Don't bother, we supply our own.

 

 

Did you catch that story of how he got it?

 

  Yes,  the TV announcers mentioned it on the MNF Colts-Jets game last night.  I had no idea that the nickname came about because Edwin Jackson was late to a pre-draft visit to the Arizona Cardinals and because of that his Mom made the Cardinals brass pound cake to help Edwin Jackson's standing with the Cardinals going into the draft.   Great story and nickname!   He looks like a good find for the Colts.

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It took the Lions many years of drafting high to get competitive.  The Browns haven't been competitive in many, many years.  Oakland has finally turned the corner after being irrelevant for longer than the Jaguars have been.  Parity isn't guaranteed.  Your team getting better isn't a guarantee that it shows up in the win column in a given year as half the league each year is getting better than the other half to varying degrees and those halves are redefined every year.  Most players in the league are professionals and are good at what they do, but they're going up against other professionals that are also good at what they do.  I think most fans are obviously focused on their own team and aren't as interested and don't have the time to spend watching and evaluating every other team in the league to really know that their team is in fact getting better than the competition.

 

Generally, pulling yourself out of the cellar of your division means you found your QB as Detroit and Oakland have demonstrated.  We haven't found our guy yet.  It may still end up being Blake, but it doesn't look promising at this time.  And that's a shame because I don't believe that a quality alternative is on the way for at least a couple of years.  I wouldn't be shocked if we end up picking up the 5th year option on Blake regardless of what's transpired this season so far.

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It took the Lions many years of drafting high to get competitive.  The Browns haven't been competitive in many, many years.  Oakland has finally turned the corner after being irrelevant for longer than the Jaguars have been.  Parity isn't guaranteed.  Your team getting better isn't a guarantee that it shows up in the win column in a given year as half the league each year is getting better than the other half to varying degrees and those halves are redefined every year.  Most players in the league are professionals and are good at what they do, but they're going up against other professionals that are also good at what they do.  I think most fans are obviously focused on their own team and aren't as interested and don't have the time to spend watching and evaluating every other team in the league to really know that their team is in fact getting better than the competition.

 

Generally, pulling yourself out of the cellar of your division means you found your QB as Detroit and Oakland have demonstrated.  We haven't found our guy yet.  It may still end up being Blake, but it doesn't look promising at this time.  And that's a shame because I don't believe that a quality alternative is on the way for at least a couple of years.  I wouldn't be shocked if we end up picking up the 5th year option on Blake regardless of what's transpired this season so far.

 

5th year option salary for top 10 QBs will likely be in the $18 million range.  I retract my statement above that I believe they'll pick up Blake's 5th year option.  They'll likely just let him prove it next year and franchise him if he plays well. 

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That's what I would have thought until now.  But the whole franchise is off.  The whole team is off.  They are breaking basic league parity somehow.  The NFL does change gradually, sometimes in ways that probably aren't obvious.  For instance, the formula of how to win a Super Bowl changes depending on who won it last. And teams are built to ultimately compete for a Super Bowl.  But there is even obvious change, such as the return game and extra points.   The point is it doesn't go from 1969 to 2019 overnight.  Change is happening all the time, trends are changing all the time, gimmicks and fads come and go depending on how effective they are on a weekly basis.  I'm not saying for sure this explains anything, but other more direct explanations also don't seem to fully explain what has has been happening to the Jaguars the past decade.  The Jaguars just always seem to be out of tune with the rest of the NFL.

 

"the formula of how to win a Super Bowl changes depending on who won it last." 

 

That's kind of circular reasoning, isn't it?   Team A wins the Super Bowl, so that's the way to win a Super Bowl, but the next year, Team B wins a different way, so that's the new way to win a Super Bowl.   But if Team B re-sets "the way to win a Super Bowl" then the way team A won wasn't necessarily the way to win, was it?   Team B didn't have to play like Team A, did they?  

 

If all you have to do to re-set the standard of how to win is **to win**, then there is no standard.   You didn't have to copy the previous team, did you? 

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It was the first one, but contextually it applies to why this team can't win. Gus has reached the limit of his knowledge and ability and nothing can help that except getting someone else.

 

I totally agree with that.   And I would add, sometimes, things just don't work out and you have to move on.  Gus may be a perfectly fine head coach, but regardless of that,  it just isn't working here. 

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

 

 

Blowing up everything and going all young backfired. The rookie psyche's ended up being really fragile and they succumbed to losing, combined with a head-coach who appeared to have a habit of never pushing for any accountability, and we have this team that has no clue how to win, no competitive drive, and are just content with collecting a paycheck and checking their Instagram accounts

 

 

What's wrong with this franchise is what's been wrong for years and years now. They wait until the very last minute to carry out the inevitable. They wait too long to pull a QB, they wait too long to fire a coach ect.. I know sometimes it's best to be patient but sometimes you also need to recognize when to pull the plug.

 

When you have a team with double-digit losses in 6 consecutive seasons (utterly insane and depressing) it is more than any one factor. These guys all hit on major reasons. Short term, this team right now is hamstrung by bad coaching and bad QB play. Bigger picture, this front office has created an atmosphere where losing is the norm, and was accepted as part of the plan, so I agree with jaglyn that the psyche of these young players has been damaged, although I disagree when he says they don't care about it.

 

There is a lot of truth in WingerDinger's post too. The vast majority of fans recognized a coaching change was needed after last season. It seems like Caldwell / Khan were too immersed in the 'philosophy' to see that it had become part of the problem, and that the team needed new leadership and some hard motivation to take it to the next level. It has resulted in this season being a waste of everyone's time.

 

Finally the coaching situation is (surely) going to be changed, but the scary thing is we now have the exact same decision to make about the QB. It's evident by now that Bortles is not a viable franchise QB, how long will they stick with him and keep this team from being competitive? Of course it's not exactly easy to replace him, but I think it would be a huge error if they go through the rest of this season and into the next saying 'Bortles is our starter, we believe in him'. He needs to be held accountable, he needs to be challenged, and he needs to be forced to compete for his job at the very least. Ultimately, I am reasonably sure he will need to be replaced, so the sooner we begin looking for his successor the better. Starting with giving Allen a shot at the end of this year.

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The curse of Marino lives on...

62-7 was a mammoth curse.  don't forget to add the curse of Jimmy Johnson as well.  2 for 1

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"Remember Red, Hope is a good thing. Maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies."  - Andy Dufresne, The Shawshank Redemption

The problem is philosophical and if the Caldwell plan had worked we would be 6-6 like the rest of the division.  They went for a long term plan that focused on one side of the ball over the other, starting with offense because the rules favor offense.  This plan also was based on sitting Bortles until he could fix his deficiencies and the line was good enough to support him.  Then we would round out the "process" with Gus's super special defense filled out this year to play his scheme.

 

We were patient enough to reach this point but not sit the QB.  My personal hindsight was believing fools gold last year.  Honestly they should have stayed committed to sitting him.  The fan base would have been upset but the front office didn't believe we would compete until last year/this year anyway.

 

When you compromise your plan you hit some road blocks.  BB got beat around too much his first 2 years and we didn't have the coaching staff to keep him comitted to a real improvement plan.  If you don't have the right coach and the right QB you'll look like our team.

 

It is unreal the gameplan that teams are executing to great effect against this team.

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The Khan Years

Patience, Persistence, and Piss Poor General Managers.

Somewhere beneath Everbank Field is a vortex to NFL hell.

 

That's the only thing that I can think of at this point as to why the last nine years have been awful for this group.

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You're Welcome.

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.

This could be a side effect of poor coaching and poor discipline. If you have neither in the plus column it doesn't matter how good the players are, it's all going to suck. We have talent on this team but it has been and is being so mismanaged it's horrifically comical at this point. 

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62-7 was a mammoth curse.  don't forget to add the curse of Jimmy Johnson as well.  2 for 1

 

  Make it 3 for 1 with the ' Billy Goat Curse'  coming because of a Tinker on the roster. 

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Bradley and Bortles


A coach with the ability to correct mistakes from happening week after week after week and QB with just mediocre accuracy would have this team at .500 right now.

Dang you've been really all in on an anti-Bortles platform recently. And I can't say I disagree with you, but I am willing to give Bortles another shot next year. Do you like a Draft Prospect or FA to replace him? Cause I don't see any that would suffice.


I don't think we can win with a game manager at QB. With Garrard it worked because we had an amazing duo of RBs and Garrard, to his credit also was amazingly accurate in 2007, his medium range throws were precision. We also had JDR who somehow had a coordinator that got something out of Matt Jones and Reggie Williams lol.


That being said I still believe coaching is a HUGE and our biggest issue by far. If JDR got to the playoffs with 0 pass rush, a horrible defensive backfield, and with Matt jones, then I don't know how Gus can't even muster up 6 wins with the amount of talent we have.

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The coaching staff is what's wrong with this team.

 

There's no way that you can convince me that if we had someone similar to Coughlin, Peyton, or even Del Rio that this team would perform this badly and Bortles would regress the way he has. 

 

To NYC4Jags: You can't correctly judge accuracy until you've corrected a QBs mechanics. Once that does happen with a new (competent) coaching staff, then we'll see the real Blake Bortles, good or bad.

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Dang you've been really all in on an anti-Bortles platform recently. And I can't say I disagree with you, but I am willing to give Bortles another shot next year. Do you like a Draft Prospect or FA to replace him? Cause I don't see any that would suffice.


I don't think we can win with a game manager at QB. With Garrard it worked because we had an amazing duo of RBs and Garrard, to his credit also was amazingly accurate in 2007, his medium range throws were precision. We also had JDR who somehow had a coordinator that got something out of Matt Jones and Reggie Williams lol.


That being said I still believe coaching is a HUGE and our biggest issue by far. If JDR got to the playoffs with 0 pass rush, a horrible defensive backfield, and with Matt jones, then I don't know how Gus can't even muster up 6 wins with the amount of talent we have.

 

I'm not "anti-Bortles" really, I was trying to matter-of-factly answer the thread title question. And unfortunately  - he's costing this team wins.  

Yes, I'd like to see if he can be salvaged.  But I hope to see him competing with Allen and a draft pick in camp.  

 

A game manager is never really the long term answer, but we'd be .500 with one right now in my opinion. 

 

BTW - Matt Jones was actually becoming a legit WR in his fourth year before the wheels fell off in his personal life. Sure it took him too long to make the switch and then he threw it away, but... he did look legit (even with the awkward long stride) in much of that fourth season. 

 

Regardless -   Garrard and Koetter could have done much, much more if they had Robinson/Lee/Hurns etc to work with. 

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“An empty vessel makes the loudest sound, so they that have the least wit are the greatest babblers.”. - Plato

This honestly could be worse.


Imagine if Bortles went down in preseason or something and Gus got the "pass" for this season. Then Bortles comes back next season and same result! Awful..

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Shock the world

  Yes,  the TV announcers mentioned it on the MNF Colts-Jets game last night.  I had no idea that the nickname came about because Edwin Jackson was late to a pre-draft visit to the Arizona Cardinals and because of that his Mom made the Cardinals brass pound cake to help Edwin Jackson's standing with the Cardinals going into the draft.   Great story and nickname!   He looks like a good find for the Colts.

 

Glad his mom didn't make the Cardinals brass fruit cake

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Glad his mom didn't make the Cardinals brass fruit cake

 

  Absolutely,  positively!  weat:

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This honestly could be worse.


Imagine if Bortles went down in preseason or something and Gus got the "pass" for this season. Then Bortles comes back next season and same result! Awful..

 

  The worst part of this for Jaguars fans or other team fan bases is what you mentioned is this is a realistic type of scenario in the NFL.  

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