It still seems backwards.

I’m trying not to let the fact that Doug Pederson is a nice guy color my thoughts about this but Jaguars Owner Shad Khan’s decision to fire Doug and retain Trent Baalke as the General Manager seems like the opposite of what was necessary. In fact, it’s the third of three changes I’d have probably made in Shad’s shoes.

First, I’d have gotten rid of Baalke. He’s a dividing force inside the Jaguars offices. Insiders say he’s tough to work with and creates adversaries among co-workers who are supposed to be on the same team, “A culture vulture,” one Jaguars employee described him as when asked what his problem has been. “He sucks your organization dry.”

From personal experience, Baalke has a lot of hubris when discussing football. He’s almost haughty when I’ve asked a question, the unspoken “given” in his response is, “I’m smarter than you. I know more than you so how dare you ask that question.”

Second, I’d have asked Doug to change both coordinators and stay on. If he said no, I’d have told him he’d have to go as well.

Third, I’d have just cleaned out everybody. But Shad hates paying people not to work, despite it being a fact of life in the football business.

Apparently, Khan never considered a clean sweep. Listening in on the Zoom press conference Shad and Baalke held on Monday afternoon, Khan expressed a lot of confidence in their “organization.”

“I’m not sure what you mean by ‘clean sweep,’” Shad said when asked if he considered getting rid of everybody. “We have eighty-five people in the football organization who are doing their jobs. What? You’re going to go out and find eighty-five better? Overall, our organization is pretty good. We need to fix what needs to be fixed now.”

Baalke chimed in, “We don’t need to fix everything, we just need to fix some things.”

Hubris and smugness are the usual downfall of most leaders who don’t last, and it won’t surprise me if that’s Baalke’s eventual Waterloo as well. But for now, he has Shad’s confidence.

And that could be part of the problem. A meeting among the staff last week brought Shad a consensus that a full reset was necessary. But he disregarded that, apparently, he doesn’t have enough confidence in the opinion of the rest of the people in the building.

Khan talked in the presser about Baalke’s “Body of work, the metrics, the salary cap and how he leaned on other NFL owners, and people in the NFL organization to help him come to the conclusion that Pederson had to go.

And that breaks it down to its essence. It’s not those things that make a winning organization. It’s culture and leadership. The Jaguars are the most talented bad football team I’ve ever seen. Baalke has shown he can evaluate talent; he hasn’t shown he can build a team.

Former Jaguars Head Coach Tom Coughlin, a two-time Super Bowl winner with the New York Giants explained that to me in 2000.

“You’ve got the top of the roster. Those are the players you expect to make the play ten out of ten times. When the game’s on the line, you want the ball in their hands,” he began. “And some of them are leaders who set the culture and tone for the rest of the team.” Think Tony Boselli. Paul Posluszny, Calais Campbell or even Leon Searcy. Would you get in a fight with Leon? I think not. Any starter on this Jaguars team willing to wave Jason Taylor down to the other end of the field on Monday Night Football a la Boselli? No.

“In the middle of the roster you have the spot starters, those who are going to make the plays most of the time and can perhaps develop into ‘top of the roster’ players,” he continued. “They’re subs, stalwarts on special teams, guys who push the starters to be better.” Here’s where Gary Walker, Lonnie Marts and Tom McManus come to mind, although they were mainly starters. Dewey Wingard is the only guy on the Jaguars roster who fits this description.

Then he got to the crux of building a team, without perhaps even knowing it.

“At the bottom of the roster, you have guys who are very talented, great athletes, or they wouldn’t be in the NFL. But they didn’t make it on talent alone. They have grit, they want to mix it up. They’re the tough guys, the ‘stand in the hole and make it hurt’ kind of players. They’re in the weight room competing. They end up holding everybody else accountable for their toughness. Football is a tough game.” There are dozens of former Jaguars who fit this description. You could put McManus in this slot, Jeff Kopp, Montell Owens, Brant Boyer.

The Jaguars have a lot of top of the roster guys, but none are the leaders or culture builders they need. They have some middle of the roster guys. They have zero bottom of the roster guys.

To build a culture you need continuity. Ever notice how the Pittsburgh Steelers always seem to have the same guys, just different names? Greg Lloyd is James Harrison, just with a different name. Mike Tomlin sets the tone for that, and the Rooney family has preached continuity forever. In the last fifty-four years, they’ve had three head coaches. Three: Chuck Noll, Bill Cowher and Mike Tomlin. And Tomlin has never had a losing record. What’s that tell you? He demands the players meet a certain standard. You don’t fit, you’re gone.

Look what Dan Campbell has done in Detroit. He only accepted tough guys on his team, from the starters on down. When you watch them play, they hit, they play with a sense of urgency we haven’t seen since 2017 and rarely before that as well.

Hiring a new Head Coach for the Jaguars will be tricky with Baalke in place. Khan didn’t answer the question directly when asked if the new head coach would report to him. “Doug reported to me, Trent reports to me, that worked,” was his answer.

I did like some of the things Shad said but can’t decide whether they were talking points put together by his PR team or what he actually thinks.

“We’re the most predictable team in the NFL on both sides of the ball,” Khan said about why he made a coaching change. He’s right about that. “We were twentieth in the league on defense last year, this year we’re last. Part of success in the NFL is deception, and we need that.”

What about if a coach comes in and says the Jaguars need to revamp the personnel side? “We have to create an environment for them to be successful. If we can get better, I want to listen to that. I know we can improve.”

And what’s the pitch to a new Head Coach? “We have a compelling case to offer somebody as our head coach,” he responded. “The personnel, the facilities, the health and wellness of the players. We’ll interview them and they’ll interview us. I want to make sure this isn’t about ego or power. If it’s a legit effort to get better, everything should be on the table.”

And what about hiring an Executive Vice President as part of both the personnel and football sides of the organization? “We’re lean. We need to add some people. But we need to identify the right people.”

You don’t have to look far Shad. Hire Boselli. Get Ben Johnson. Bring Mark Brunell as the offensive coordinator.

It’s easy to see what kind of team is taking the field in professional sports just by walking into their locker room.

Professional players are just that; professionals, mercenaries that are wearing a certain team’s colors for money and their livelihood. Some got there through the draft, some came as free agents or made the team on hustle and heart. So, what differentiates winning mercenaries from teams that are going through the motions?

Culture.

A former first round pick in the NFL draft, Eric Curry once pointed that out to me in a winning Jaguars locker room shortly after his arrival.

“Oh, you can tell this team wants to win,” he said when I asked what the difference was between the Jaguars and his other NFL experience.

“That’s not normal?” I asked.

“No, no,” he added, shaking his head. “Most guys are there for the money and you can tell. This team is different.”

Curry was describing the winning culture in the Jaguars locker room in the late ‘90’s. It’s called a lot of different things, playing for each other, rally together, whatever.

Although the league hasn’t allowed reporters in the locker room for two years now citing Covid, an NFL locker room housing a winning team has a vibe like none other. No telling what the Jaguars locker room is like, but the contrast between the two is dramatic.

In a winning locker room there’s chatter, guys walking around, there’s music playing, a ping-pong game happening, with other players watching (and betting) on the outcome.

A losing locker room has an eerie quiet, individual guys working, then dressing and leaving. Their social life is elsewhere, their free time is spent away from that losing environment.

In 2017, the Jaguars locker room was vibrant, energizing, and full of a desire to play well.

For the team.

Where does that come from?

It’s a culture that’s created by players who know how it gets done at the highest level. The Jaguars had Calais Campbell, Marcedes Lewis and Paul Posluszny on that team. None of those three are “rah rah” guys, but because of their professionalism, how they come to work every day ready to compete, they set the tone for everybody else.

“You really have to start over every year,” then Head Coach Doug Marrone said after their Jaguars were beaten in New England in the AFC Championship game. “You have to build it up from the ground again.”

He was exactly right, except he should have added that the foundation was there to continue a “sustainable winner” as so many franchises have in the NFL

And that’s where the Jaguars faltered.

They’ve done it continually in their twenty-seven-year history, winning games or seasons here and there but never building on their success. After 2017, Posluszny retired, Lewis was allowed to leave as a free agent and Campbell was eventually traded to Baltimore.

Culture, gone.

I suppose they were expecting Jalen Ramsey, Yannick Ngakoue and Myles Jack to pick up the slack. But that’s a totally mis-read of the team. Blame it on General Manager Dave Caldwell if you like, but eventually, Shad and Tony Khan are signing off on these moves and have to be culpable when it comes to losing.

Why do teams like Pittsburgh, Baltimore, New England, and others yearly compete for playoff spots?

Culture.

If a player takes a step back in his production on the field, he’s still part of the culture there and they keep him to build on it. There’s an expectation level that’s carried from one generation of player to the next. The Jaguars have never done that. They always trade or let a player go a year too early rather than a year too late.

Since Khan bought the team in 2012, he’s the thread that runs through the organization. He’s signing off on the moves they’re making and he hasn’t seemed to grasp the difference between building that winner in pro sports and in business.

In business, changing managers or leadership doesn’t change the culture of your organization. That’s coming from the top, from ownership and their direct involvement. In pro sports, that culture tone might be set by the leadership, but it’s built from the players up. You can’t install a culture on a team, they have to build it.

Which is why the Urban Meyer hire was all wrong.

Meyer’s success at the collegiate level was built on a culture of “me.” It’s about him, it starts with him, and it only ends with him when they’re winning. Which he did a lot in college. And when it wasn’t working, he cut and run.

This Jaguars team coming off a 1-15 season needed a rebuild and had the draft picks and free-agent money to do it. They just needed the right architect to start the job. Khan picked Meyer, based on his success in college and the sales job Meyer did on him. Perhaps blinded by his success, Khan didn’t ask enough questions of the people around Meyer about his failures.

It’s obvious Meyer has a problem with other adults. He’s fine when everybody is subservient to him. When the players are young and impressionable, when the staff is relying on his recommendation for jobs in the future and when the roster has a hundred players, all close in talent and all available at any time.

In the pro game, as Jimmy Johnson noted, it’s a galaxy of difference.

Players are adults, the staff has a wealth of experience in both winning and losing, fans can sense when their team is on the path to winning and the media asks real questions about what you’re doing. Meyer doesn’t want to deal with any of that.

Reports this week of an at-practice argument between Meyer and Marvin Jones are not surprising. Jones is a veteran who has seen winning and losing in his career and didn’t like how Meyer was criticizing the wide receiver corps in public.

I’m sure Meyer was shocked that a player would question him. “I’m smart and you’re stupid,” is his usual thought process. And that he would engage in an argument on the field isn’t how you lead.

The “I’m a winner, you’re losers” meeting with the assistants is right on target with Meyer’s lack of credibility among Jaguars players and staff. He might as well have had a couple of steel balls in his hand, rotating them as he made his accusations. (Some of you might get that. See “The Caine Mutiny.”)

Khan will have a decision to make as the season winds down. If he keeps Meyer, there will be a mass exodus on his staff. He doesn’t have the connections in the NFL to replace coaches with experience in the league, so he’ll have to go to the college coaching ranks. Meyer has no credibility in his own locker room, so the players banding together with Meyer as the common ‘enemy’ if you will, could build the culture they need. And if GM Trent Baalke sticks around, which is doubtful, finding players will still be his challenge. Trevor Lawrence and Josh Allen are his best, legitimate players. He needs four or five more like them to build a winner.

Could be tough sledding for a while.

A couple of years ago I was sitting in the press box during a Jaguars game next to my good friend and colleague Dan Hicken. After a particularly goofy play, you know kind where the Jaguars get a turnover and immediately throw an interception that goes the other way for six? Dan turned to me and said, “Is this team cursed?”

We laughed and I told him the story of the phone calls and emails I received when the Jaguars original logo came out in 1994. “Don’t they know the blue tongue shows a cursed animal!” the writers exclaimed. I passed that along to Wayne Weaver at the time, knowing the “blue tongue” was his wife Delores’ idea. Wayne laughed it off, as did the current Jaguars ownership when they redesigned the Jaguars head. Dan and I had a laugh, then stopped with raised eyebrows and said, “Really?”

Google “Blue Tongue Curse” and this phrase pops up: “According to legend, animals that have blue tongues are a curse that was brought down by the gods.”

So, in some cultures, the blue tongue is a thing.

As we watch the Super Bowl today, we’ll suffer through the numerous former Jaguars who have populated the Bucs and the Chiefs rosters, including THREE former Jaguars starting quarterbacks.

It would be bad enough that Chad Henne and Blaine Gabbert, the two backup quarterbacks in the game, are former starters here, but even Byron Leftwich plays a significant role in Super Bowl LV as the Bucs Offensive Coordinator. The Chiefs also have Patrick Omameh on their practice squad, as well as Dustin Colquitt who spent a minute here in December. In addition to Leftwich, the Bucs are using Leonard Fournette in a two-man backfield in a much more effective role than his three years here.

This is a familiar song for Jaguars fans. “Everybody who leaves here gets a Super Bowl ring,” is a common refrain. Because it’s true. If not a spot in the big game, former Jaguars players litter the rosters of playoff teams year after year.

Under different ownership, different personnel decision makers and coaches, the Jaguars have been on the wrong side of players’ decisions at nearly every turn in their history.

After buying a car specifically with a full lay-down front seat so he could sleep there in the parking lot trying to make the Jaguars, Allen Lazard was cut, signed with the Packers and is now one of Aaron Rodgers favorite targets. Marcedes Lewis is in his third year with the Pack, the Jaguars letting him go in free agency.

When it comes to players, and decisions about who to keep, who to let become a free agent and whom to draft, it’s not hard to see the path the Jaguars took to the bottom of the league and the top of the draft.

Go all the way back to the 2006 draft and there aren’t many players picked that year even still playing in the league, but the Jaguars first round pick is still a productive player. Problem is that Marcedes is still playing. With the Packers. Inexcusable to let him become a free agent at a time they desperately needed him in the locker room.

Jump ahead to the 2010 draft and there are about half of the players picked in the first round now finishing ten years in the league. Including the Jaguars first pick, Tyson Alulu. But he’s been in Pittsburgh starting nearly every game for the Steelers for the last four years. Could it have been that expensive to keep him around? It wasn’t like he was a hotly sought-after free agent.

It’s difficult to play the “But they could have had that guy” game when the context of the team isn’t part of the discussion.

But it’s hard not to play that game though in the 2011 draft. Blaine Gabbert was the best player in the draft according to Jack Del Rio at the time and while Gabbert is still in the league, he proved not to be a franchise quarterback in the NFL. And the player taken right after him was J.J. Watt. At least the Jaguars didn’t take Christian Ponder in the first round. He was taken right after Watt by the Vikings and only lasted 38 games in the league.

In 2012 the Jaguars famously took Justin Blackmon in Shad Khan’s first draft as an owner. Supremely talented, Blackmon had problems beyond football and was out of the league after 20 games. Interestingly, none of the first six wide receivers taken that year, including four taken in the first round, are still in the league.

There were five tackles taken in the first round in 2013. Four are still playing and starting in the NFL. Only the Jaguars second overall pick Luke Joeckel isn’t playing football right now. Eric Williams was the first pick and while he’s injured and won’t play in the Super Bowl, he’s been a mainstay for the Chiefs up front.

There’s plenty to argue about the when it comes to the decisions made in the draft room in 2014. Dave Caldwell thought they could get either Blake Bortles and Marqise Lee or Jimmy Garaoppolo and Allen Robinson. Luckily Johnny Manziel wasn’t on their radar. They decided on Bortles over Garaoppolo and ended up getting Robinson late in the second round. He didn’t want to be a receiver on a Blake Bortles quarterbacked team, so he left as a free agent a few years later and is a star for the Bears. Teddy Bridgewater is still playing, another quarterback taken in the first round.

In 2015 they missed on Dante Fowler and his character issues. In 2016 they got the player they wanted in Jalen Ramsey but didn’t realize what a goofball he was.

The 2017 draft should irk all Jaguars fans. Tom Coughlin selected Leonard Fournette, looking for a back to carry the load. That’s fine, take a running back, but it looked like Coughlin was building a team to win twenty years ago instead of in today’s pass-happy NFL. Christian McCaffrey was the most versatile running back in that draft. And I won’t mention that Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson were taken tenth and twelfth in the first round. Yes, the Jaguars were a play away from the Super Bowl that year but in this exercise, we can look at the bigger picture.

That was also the year they let Lewis go as a free-agent and Paul Posluszny retired. They never have recovered from the leadership void they left in the locker room. Calais Campbell filled that for a bit, but it’s tough to do by yourself. Six of the eleven defensive starters from the 2017 defense are still starting in the league.

Elsewhere.

I’m still perplexed by Coughlin’s pick of Taven Bryan in the first round of the 2018 draft. I suppose he was building across the defensive line of scrimmage hoping to have a cadre of linemen in a rotation. But Lamar Jackson was taken three picks later.

Hard to say what will come of the personnel the Jaguars acquired in last year’s draft. C.J. Henderson only played eight games before getting hurt and K’Lavon Chaisson did show promise at the end of this season. Yannick Ngakoue is on his second team after getting bad advice and forcing his way out of Jacksonville. And not figuring out how to keep Calais Campbell showed the decision-makers didn’t have a good handle on what was going on in the locker room. It’s the unpardonable decision that eventually cost Caldwell his job.

In fact, you throw all of those decisions at one team in just ten years, it’s no wonder they’re 1-15 and will pick first in this year’s draft.

Here’s to hoping that the new brain trust of Trent Baalke and Urban Meyer somehow leaps away from the “blue tongue” curse and puts the Jaguars on a new path.

Don’t over think it. It was good to hear Baalke say he was interested in taking the best player available on the board in the draft. Take Trevor Lawrence and move on. Use some of that $76 million under the cap and invest in some of the premium positions on the offensive line, at linebacker and safety.

Watch the Super Bowl today and enjoy it. Look at what the Bucs and Chiefs did with a new coach and a new quarterback to move from pretenders to contenders. And think of what can be in short time.

Author’s Note:

The sports and broadcasting worlds lost an icon this week and I lost a close and true friend as tennis legend Tony Trabert died at his home in Ponte Vedra on Wednesday. He was ninety years old. A NCAA Tennis Champion who also started on the University of Cincinnati basketball team, “Trabes,” as he was known to his generational friends, went on to win ten Major Championships including three legs of the Grand Slam, the French, Wimbledon and US titles in 1955. His only loss was to Ken Rosewall in the semi’s in Australia after helping the US team bring home the Davis Cup. That year Tony had one of the all-time great yeas in tennis, winning 106 matches, including 38-straight and taking 10 straight titles. Trabert played on five Davis Cup teams and went on to Captain the squad for five years. A Hall of Famer himself, he served as the President of the International Tennis Hall of Fame and his broadcasting career as the lead tennis analyst here in the US and in Australia spanned over three decades.

In the high-velocity worlds of sports and broadcasting it’s hard to find a mentor but Tony was mine for the second half of my career as a genuine and trusted friend. He made me better at my job but more importantly taught me to be a better person. His level of grace was unmatched. Tony had a kind soul, a quick wit, an easy smile, a generous spirit and a look-you-in-the-eye firm handshake. I was lucky to write about Tony in this column a few times, a small look into his life and legacy, on and off the court.

Trabert called North Florida home for nearly forty years, meeting his wife Vicky while broadcasting at The Players Championship on March 20, 1982. “You know, our zip code, 32082,” he often joked.

Like anybody who knew him, I will miss him terribly.

It would be no surprise that all of my friends are sports fans. Oh, they have plenty of varied interests, from tango to traveling, investing to industry. But sports binds all of us together, it’s our common denominator.

All of my friends are also old enough to have been around to see the Jaguars become an NFL franchise and take pride in having a team in our town. And like a majority of Jaguars fans, they moved here from somewhere else. So, their allegiance is split, but they all are Shad Khan’s definition of a fan: They buy tickets. Or more.

I asked them all this week about a new start for the Jaguars. A new coach, a new general manager, a whole new beginning.

“It’s a great opportunity,” ‘Big Beef’ a Giants/Dolphins/Jaguars fan said. Beef is an avid football fan and admits he looks at things through a fans eye. He supports the Jaguars by more than just buying tickets. He uses his time at the stadium to entertain and be entertained.

“With all of that cap space, the draft picks, the young guys on the team, I just hope they hire the right people to get the job done,” he added.

That was the consensus about hiring: get the right people in here.

Most of them said it makes them cringe to hear Urban Meyer’s name mentioned as a possibility to take over downtown. Citing the lack of success college coaches have had moving to pro football, they’re not sure Meyer’s resume should make him a candidate.

I agree with that and think it might be the most tone-deaf thing Khan and team president Mark Lamping could do in this search.

National pundits call Meyer a “prime candidate” citing his connection to Florida through his time in Gainesville. Obviously, they’re lapping up something Urban is putting out there or just didn’t pay attention to his departure from the Gators.

Meyer left as the most unliked guy he could possibly be for a coach who won two National Champions at Florida. And people still don’t like him to this day. Maybe he had health problems, but after leaving and saying he wanted to spend more time with family, I guess they were all living at the Fox Sports Studios because that’s where he spent most of his time. And he did almost the same thing at Ohio State.

None of this bothers my friend ‘Ghost of Chuck,’ a Bills/Jaguars fan.

“He’s a CEO type and that’s what the Jaguars need,” Ghost said this week. “He scares me as a college coach making the move to the pros. NFL players are different animals. I suspect the quality of his character over some of the things he’s done, but he has the leadership skills they need.”

My friend ‘The BQ’ also is a Jet/Jaguars fan. He sees Meyer as a bad fit altogether.

“College to the pros, it’s tough,” he agreed. Adding, “And he’s got a big ego, that’s hard to match a coach with a big ego with the ego of these players these days.”

“Look at Andy Reid,” he said as an example. “He never was bigger than his team. Coaches get carried away with themselves and they tend to shield themselves from the organization. That’s egotistical. Guys like Reid and Mike Tomlin, those guys are in the trenches with the players and the front office, the whole organization. The coach and the GM need to be part of the organization while leading it.”

Ghost said he doesn’t think the head coach has to be an x’s and o’s guy. Just somebody everybody trusts to lead.

“They need a coach who has the vision and passes it on to everybody else. The strength guy, the front office staff, the video guy The GM has to be a scout/personnel guy with an eye for the talent.

When I noted that the Jaguars have relied on ‘Super Scouts’ like Gene Smith and ‘highly thought of personnel guys’ like Dave Caldwell with no success, Ghost laughed.

“Just like in business,” he said. “Sometimes you have to keep the Peter Principle in mind. You promote somebody to the highest level of their incompetence. It really comes down to you have to pick the right players and you have to have a quarterback.”

You might remember my friend ‘Wooly’ from our trips to Las Vegas and the ‘action’ he likes associated with the NFL. As an Eagles/Jaguars fan, he’s stayed away from betting on the Jags saying he’s never sure what they’re going to do.

“I try to avoid betting with my heart,” he said with a laugh. “I’ve just stayed away from them. I never have confidence in them whether I bet with or against them. Their last two weeks in the regular season are a blueprint as why I’ve stayed away from ‘em.”

If you didn’t follow that, the Jaguars were competitive against the Bears in the first half in week sixteen, giving their supporters hope, and got blown out in the last thirty minutes. The next week they easily covered the spread against the Colts. A game where they were supposed to get blown out.

Which brings Wooly to his conclusion about a new Jaguars leadership team.

“The head coach has to have the experience of developing a young quarterback. You can’t rely on an assistant to get that done.”

And he added they just need to do the obvious thing: pick Trevor Lawrence.

“They have the opportunity to select a player to be the face of the franchise for the next ten years or more. This is the obvious pick. They need a quarterback in a quarterback’s league. And t’s going to continue to be that way.”

I was amazed at how insistent my friends were about taking Trevor Lawrence. Not that he’s not the right guy to take, but they all mentioned their fear that the Jaguars might NOT take him. They’ve been beaten down by underperformance and bad decision making for so long they fear the team won’t do the obvious, best thing.

“Take the quarterback and build around him,” BQ said, somewhat exasperated. “It’s the tried-and-true formula for the league over the past 20 or so years. Don’t overthink it.”

“He’s a generational talent, scouts think so, the other players think so,” Ghost added. “I’m using the Buffalo blueprint. Sean McDermott was a defensive guy but had a plan laid out for everything when they interviewed him for the job. The weight room, the staff, the practice schedule, all of it. He was building a team in the best sense of the word and now they have one of the most productive offenses in the league because they got the quarterback (Josh Allen).”

BQ echoed what everybody said when it comes to building the team from scratch: Don’t get fancy.

“Need a guy that sticks to basics,” BQ said of both the GM and the coach. Follow the rule book until this team gets on its feet. Basic blocking and tackling until they get established. They have some good young players. Get a core of players that are going to be around for a while.”

When I mentioned that Shad Khan was the second fastest owner to a hundred losses ever in the NFL, nobody laid the blame at his feet.

“I don’t hold ownership accountable for how they’ve lost,” Wooly said “He hasn’t been erratic. He’s been supportive. He hasn’t shortchanged the opportunity for the team to win like some owners have. The brand is fine, the product has been terrible.”

Amen to that.

The Jaguars have won at a twenty seven percent clip in the last decade, or perhaps better said, they’ve lost at a seventy-three percent average.

“Losing gets old,” Beef lamented leading to his solution. “Take Lawrence, get a line to protect him, build a team around him. Belichick didn’t worry about the quarterback the whole time Brady was there. Do the same here. It’s a team effort.”

There are three teams that stand out in Jaguars history as the best in the team’s 26 seasons. All three went to the AFC Championship game, in 1996, in 1999 and in 2017.

And all three lost.

The ’99 team is one of the best I’ve seen assembled and clearly the best in Jaguars history. They were 14-2 in the regular season and probably the best team in the league that year. The 2017 team had a lot of good ingredients and talent as they battled all the way into the fourth quarter in New England only to be beaten by Tom Brady and a quick whistle.

That ’96 team is the one that’s an anomaly in the group. They weren’t overly talented, didn’t have a lot of veterans and came into the year with low expectations.

Very similar to the 2020 Jaguars. Young, with low expectations and maybe most importantly, no drama.

After Thursday’s loss to Miami, this year’s team is tracking much like that ’96 team. Both opened with wins and fell to 1-2. In ’96, they were 2-4, 3-6 and 4-7 before getting their act together.

Ninety-six was the second year of the franchise after going 4-12 in their inaugural season. They added some pieces to that team, Clyde Simmons, John Jurkovic and Keenan McCardell but the bulk of the team was made up of young players trying to establish themselves in the league.

This year’s squad doesn’t have a single player over thirty. The ’96 team had just four: Clyde Simmons and Dave Widell as starters, Paul Frase, a defensive lineman and Bryan Barker as the punter.

“We didn’t have any prima-donnas on that team, nobody we deferred to,” Kevin Hardy, the Jaguars first round pick that year said this week. “We had one, Andre Rison, and Tom (Coughlin) got rid of him.”

Hardy played all 16 regular season games that year for the Jaguars and through the playoffs. He remembers the team just going out and playing football.

“We were just young guys right out of college just out there playing football as hard as we could. We were 4-7 before we went on that run,” he recalled. “But we were in every game before that. We didn’t get blown out at all. The New Orleans game and the loss to the Rams, we could have easily won both of those games.”

Amazing how vivid his memory was of that season, 25 years ago And accurate.

Four games into the ’96 season Tom McManus took over at middle linebacker and started there the rest of the year. He finished the year third on the team in tackles. His memory of what happened that year is just as clear.

“Willie Jackson scored at the end of the New England game but they didn’t give it to us,” he recalled. “ We had New Orleans and the Rams beat but didn’t finish it. I knocked a ball down against the Saints that I should have picked. If I pick it off, that game’s over. But once we beat Seattle on Sunday night here to go 8-7 we were like, ‘Hey, this is real. It’s happening. We thought ‘We can beat anybody.’”

Only three games into the season, despite the disappointment against Miami, this year’s Jaguars squad has that same gritty feel the ’96 team displayed.

A couple of times in the past two weeks Head Coach Doug Marrone has said he feels really “close to this team.” I asked him to explain a little of that before Thursday’s game against Miami. He broke it down to good communication between the players and with the coaches and a common goal.

“The vision that you have for what you want to look like as a team, that I share with the players and we talk about quite a bit, is a shared vision,” he explained. “I think when you have that with no little groups on one side or a couple groups here and people trying to tear it down or question it, I really feel good about it.”

While you all can be on the same page and blend well, you still have to have talent and that talent still has to produce. This year’s Jaguars have shown some of that early in the season. The ’96 Jaguars also depended on some young players to get things done.

“That was my rookie year and I was just trying to come in and help the team,” Hardy. “There were guys like me, (Aaron) Beasley and (Tony) Brackens who were getting a lot of playing time as rookies and we were expected to contribute.”

“Everybody knows you need talent but it’s talent with the right personality,” McManus added.
“We had that in ‘96. We fit together. We were a tough team, mentally physically and emotionally.”

McManus likens this year’s Jaguars squad to that one from ’96 in a lot of ways. He particularly likes how they’ve ‘cleaned up’ the roster.

“We didn’t have any distractions (in ’96). These guys in 2020 been through a lot of upheaval with this team. They have a lot to prove. For years it was about ‘pay me money and showing up in Brinks trucks.”

Credit Marrone with creating an environment where the players feel free to play their best. There are consequences for making mistakes, but you can’t play worried if you’re going to make a mistake or not.

“I learned early on that you had to really work as a head coach to either create or break down those barriers so that you can communicate,” Marrone emphasized. “Communication’s obviously a two-way street so a lot of times you try to have conversations and you try to learn about people and it really has nothing to do with football. [It’s] just to get to know people and get a feel for them.

“This team is young and hungry,” McManus added. “A collective group like that can be dangerous. They have a lot of young guys they’re counting on. We had a lot of young guys who were contributing in ‘96. Draft picks that could play right away. Guys like Robert Massey and Travis Davis who nobody knows but they were a part of the success.”

“We didn’t have anything to lose,” he said. “We were 4-12 the year before. Same as these guys. Nobody expects them to do anything.”

Not every team is like that and not every team can be like that. Money, contracts, a lot of things can get in the way. In the professional game.

“Team success breeds individual success,” Hardy said of how things can start to fall apart. “Guys start looking around, thinking about getting paid. It just throws the team off a little bit.”

Not hard to think that happened to the Jaguars in 2000 and again in 2018. Marrone is committed to that not happening again.

“Everyone has a really good vision on how we practice, how we play, how we approach things and that’s what we’re talking about ,” he concluded. “I feel like we have a shared vision which I think creates the closeness.”

One thing they shared after the loss to Monday night: “We have to play better.”

“There seems to be, on all of us, that we just have to do a better job early on,” Marrone said. “This has been going on now for a couple weeks, as the game goes on, you can see where now all of a sudden, it’s starting to play the way we want them to play from the beginning. We just have to be able to get them off to that start.”

Sitting down at lunch this week, a friend of mine posed a hypothetical situation.

“The Jaguars need a quarterback and despite the fact that you’re on the wrong side of fifty, they think you’re the answer,” he said. “They’re offering you a $2M contract. The caveat is you might catch the virus. Will you sign?”

“That’s a big stretch,” I said with a laugh, “But yes, I’d sign.”

Over the course of the next hour we talked about the risk involved to the people around me, the risk to my health and who I’d have to give up seeing, specifically my parents who are in their mid 80’s.

It was a lot to think about, but in the end I still decided I would play.

Why?

My age puts me in what they’re calling the “vulnerable demographic” but other than that, I don’t know of any other underlying conditions that would accelerate my risk. It’s not all about the money either, but that was a factor, equal to how I remember how much I liked playing football.

“Put that equation in a 23-year old, established professional football player’s mind, and it’s easy to see why they’re playing,” he concluded.

“In the past six months there’s been a big learning curve about this virus,” Dr. Brian Turrisi, a retired pulmonologist from Georgetown and George Washington University Hospitals said recently “The vast majority of people very sick or dying are over 50 and the larger group is over 70. Pro sports are played by people younger than forty. When we confine this to young people who play professional sports, they’re the healthiest of all,”
All professional leagues have had players opt out of this season, most citing family concerns.

Several Jaguars players confirmed they considered sitting out but weighed the options and decided to play.

“I definitely thought about it because I do have two younger daughters,” defensive back D.J. Hayden said. “I felt like this year is a big year for me. I did not want to sit the season out. But I think the best thing for my family is for me to play this year.”

“I would be lying to you if I said I didn’t,” second year defensive end Josh Allen revealed when asked if he thought about opting out. “Family is first. I don’t want to put my family in jeopardy of any harm that I bring to them. That was always something that I kept close to me. Kate, my wife, she really encouraged me to keep playing football this year because she knows what I’m striving for in my career.”

With no traditional “training camp” situation, the Jaguars players are coming to the stadium each day, and then going home. The potential for exposure increases exponentially outside of their work environment, meaning the players have to put a lot of trust in their teammates to follow the protocols when they’re not at work.

“Yeah, no doubt,” Jaguars Quarterback Gardner Minshew explained. “I told all of the guys that we have a responsibility to each other and each other’s families to be safe. Sometimes it’s not fun and sometimes it’s not what you want to do, but it’s what we need to do.”

Besides organizing practices, evaluating talent and installing the playbook, one of Jaguars Head Coach Doug Marrone’s jobs is to keep the conversation going about Covid-19, Marrone is hammering home the trust teammates are putting into one another each day. He recounted a story he told the players about getting ready to walk out of the door of the coaches’ offices without his mask on.

“So I immediately put my shirt up, turn back and go put it on,” he said. “And I was telling those guys, ‘Hey listen, we’ve got to help each other, we’ve got to be responsible.’ I said things like this will happen, and I would appreciate it if I would’ve gone into the hallway and walked down, if someone would’ve seen me, I would’ve hoped they’d say something like, ‘Hey coach!”

There’s been some talk about putting NFL teams in a “home bubble” once they cut down to the 53 players on the regular season roster. That means everybody coming in contact with the players over sixteen weeks and through the playoffs would stay together and be shut off from the rest of the world.

That’s a tough ask, even for the outsized money professional football players make. But what about the coaching staffs? The support staffs? Would the team doctors, Dr. Kevin Kaplan and Dr. Anthony Iselborn be willing to give up their practices for four months? Probably not.

“It’s very difficult to do for a long period of time,” Marrone said of the bubble idea this week. “I think that for us, I just think it’s a level of responsibility until they tell [us] anything else. You know, if someone did come to us and said, ‘Hey listen, I don’t feel that I’m in a safe environment when I leave this building,’ we would be very proactive in doing whatever we can to make sure that that player feels safe and we put him in an environment where he can feel that way.”

Marrone said the protocols in the stadium regarding everything Covid-19 related make him feel very safe and secure.

Despite the Jaguars having more players than any other team on the league’s new Covid-19/Reserve list, the NFL’s rate of positive tests for the virus is less than one percent. Zero point eight-four to be exact. A player doesn’t have to test positive to be put on the list.

Minshew revealed he was on the list and missed a couple of days with the team because he was around another player who did test positive. He and teammates Andrew Wingard and Michael Walker were roommates until they decided the best course of action to combat the virus at home was to live alone.
“They’ve moved out this year, but I think everybody in the league just can’t afford to be around somebody,” Minshew said. “Even if you’re not going to contract it, you can’t afford sitting out those couple days. We are all just going to ride it out solo this year. But, that’s honestly a good thing that it happened now. It was a thing that we all agreed that was best for us.”
Minshew said it was like the first day of school when he rejoined the team, even having his outfit picked out for his return. He doesn’t want to go through that again and has adopted a “just get to work” leadership attitude when it comes to the virus.
“If I am here in the building, it’s all I can do, until they tell me I have to leave, and I’m going to give it all I have here,” he said. “And if I can’t be in here, then I am going to figure out how I can get better at home and how I can participate from home.”