When A Team Is A Team

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One thing I like about this Jaguars team is it’s honest. That might sound like a strange thing to say about a team but after walking into locker rooms for over 40 years, you can tell when they’re feeding you a line.

Most of Jack Del Rio’s teams were full of it. Gus Bradley’s teams were honest, knowing they weren’t very good. Doug Marrone’s teams have been a little bit of both.

In 2017 they were straight up, giving real answers and backing them up with solid play. Last year’s Jaguars used the same words but you could tell they were hollow. Calais Campbell knew it from the start. That’s one of the reasons he held two “players only “ meetings in the first four weeks of the season, even though they were 4-1.

So when Campbell says, “this team could be special” I believe him. He knows they have some talent on the 53-man roster and the addition of Josh Allen makes the defense better in every aspect. But when Campbell talks about “communication” he’s actually giving us a peek into the team chemistry, especially in the locker room.

You can get a hint of what’s going on with a team noticing how they interact with each other off the field. Little things like how they walk off the practice field, how long they hang around the locker room together. What kinds of conversations are happening when they’re not talking about football?

This all might seem silly, but Head Coach Doug Marrone talks about it at the beginning of every year when he says, “We’re a team in name only. We’ll see what kind of team we become.”

When he was a head coach, Tom Coughlin said no team becomes successful without “an intense affection for one another.”

Some of the “honesty” from a team comes from the quarterback. Mark Brunell gave canned responses and kept the media at arms length on the successful Jaguars teams of the ‘90’s. But he could because Tony Boselli was the emotional leader on those teams. Blake Bortles was honest about his shortcomings and was respected for his toughness by his teammates. That worked in 2017 with complimentary parts around him. It didn’t last year when things started going south.

Nick Foles is an earnest and honest guy who always puts a positive spin on things. A lot of what he’s said since joining the Jaguars has sounded like platitudes from a guy tying to fit in.

Until this week.

Foles took the field last week for the first time in a Jaguars uniform. He said it was an emotional experience but then gave some insights to this team between the lines of his answers.

“You can tell when you step in the huddle what it’s going to be like and tonight was a step in the right direction,” he said after playing in Miami. “Just the feeling in the huddle.”

If you’ve ever been in a huddle and especially if you’ve ever been the quarterback in that huddle, you know exactly what he’s talking about. It’s almost intangible, but the confidence each player has in themselves and in the other guys around them is evident at that moment.

“I’ve stepped in a lot of huddles and just the energy was really positive in the huddle,” Foles added. “A lot of that comes from the O-line. Guys are growing closer and closer together every single day.”

This year’s training camp was designed to foster those relationships. Foles said the schedule gave the players more time off the field to talk, study and just be together. “I’m not just talking to the offense,” he said early in camp.

Cutting players is no fun for Doug Marrone and he was honest when he started the week saying that. But there’s enough talent among the 90 players who have been in camp for the Jaguars that some players released will end up on other rosters.

“It’s difficult,” he said. “The ones that are easy and are the ones that are guys that are a**holes that are not going to make it anyway. You cut them with a smile on your face. You can’t get them out of the building fast enough, but we don’t have that. We have guys that are truly working their butts off.”

The talent level in the NFL is close, top to bottom. It’s the teams that gel, stay healthy, have confidence in each other and make plays that get to the post season. If it were only all about blocking and tackling and game plans, everybody would be 8-8.

So you probably tuned Foles out when he said the following after the Miami game, although he revealed the secret to his ability to come off the bench in Philadelphia and win the Super Bowl.

“The things I focus on when I play the game are trust, love and carrying for the guys around me. All of those things can overcome anything. Execution comes when there’s like an energy when you trust the guy next to you.”

Some of you are rolling your eyes and talking about “Kum-by-ya” about now saying ‘Come on” and asking if they can hit somebody. But f you’ve ever been on any kind of team, you’ll understand the rest.

“There’s a special energy when you run a play. I was on the sideline, I was in the huddle, this thing is building. It’s about those relationships. It’s about caring for one another and the locker room is full of that right now. That’s something special. That’s something that’s built over time. We’ve been building since OTA’s and it was good to see tonight.”

At 36 Vince Covello is Finally a Rookie

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This week the PGA Tour season ends in Atlanta with the Tour Championship at East Lake. The payout this week is $45 million. That’s not a typo. The 30 players who made it to Atlanta will split $45 million with $15 million going to the winner. The eighth place finisher takes home $1.1 million. Finish last and you still get about $800,000. And that’s just part of the $70 million that made up the FedEx Cup winnings on Tour this year.

That’s why getting to the PGA Tour is a giant step for any professional golfer’s career. And that’s why Vince Covello’s story is so compelling.

Covello is 36 years old and has lived in North Florida for almost 20 years. He’s a Philadelphia native but after his family vacationed here a few times and came to watch The Players at TPC, they moved here. Vince was graduated from Nease High School in 2001 and went to UNF to play golf. He turned pro in 2004 and has been trying to make it to the PGA Tour ever since.

And this year, after 15 years of trying, he made it. He credits some of his Philadelphia upbringing for him being able to hang in there and keep trying.

“Being from there had a lot to do with my success,” he explained. “It’s a hard working town, people are hustling, trying to find a way to get it done. People don’t take no for an answer”

How big is it to get on the PGA Tour? Vince won once on what is now the Korn Ferry Tour this year and won about $165,000 playing 19 events. Justin Thomas also played 19 events on the PGA Tour this year and won once as well. He won just over $5 million.

In his profile of Covello after Vince’s win in March on the Web.com Tour in Louisiana, Times-Union golf writer Gary Smits compared him to Rocky or the NFL Eagles’ Vince Papale and even the 1985 Villanova basketball team. And he fits that mold: all underdogs who became champions.

“I never stopped smiling,” Covello said of August 11th, the day he got his card at Pumpkin Ridge in Portland. “It’s an elite list of guys 25 of the 180 or so who played the tour this year. I couldn’t get enough of it.”

He admitted it was a bit of a surreal experience to finally achieve his goal. Playing all over the world, gaining experience and trying to make some money as a professional golfer included stops in Australia, Chile, Mexico, Scotland, Austria, Turkey and Argentina among others.

You need to be resilient to continue that quest through the years and all of those stops, but Covello says there’s a bit of an art form to it as well.

“That’s always the battle,” he noted as he prepared for this week’s Korn Ferry Tour Championship at Victoria National in Indiana.

“It’s not the most lucrative business until you get to watch us on TV. It’s an art in itself just staying out there. Just knowing how to get around, save your money. Guys run out of cash and backing who can really play. You have to be fiscally aware. That’s an art in itself.”

Between 2012 and 2013 Vince went from missing getting his PGA Tour card by a shot at qualifying school (“I missed a putt on the last hole.”) to losing his status at 30 years old and had no place to play.

“It was a crushing moment. I went back to Monday qualifiers and played in Canada,” he explained. “It’s a downgrade in your life. It’s a tough walk. There are 300 guys trying to shoot 65 on Monday’s to play on the Korn Ferry Tour.”

Winning in March brought some new pressures that Covello didn’t fully expect. Some of it from inside his own head.

“There was more attention that I wasn’t used to,” he said as a first time winner. “I was the 4th ranked player out there for a minute. I knew my game was in a good spot but sometimes that makes it harder. You do things out of your comfort zone.”

After playing well the week after his win, he missed three straight cuts. That’s when he brought his coach and mentor, former PGA Tour player Anders Forsbrand, out on tour to caddy for him to see what was happening.

“It’s been my biggest help, working with him,” he said. “Almost a father figure since my dad passed away in 2009. “The golf knowledge of course, but also the mentoring. Especially since he’s walked that journey. He’s been able to talk about how to get from playing bad to playing better.”

After this week, Covello will be “zippered in” with the top 25 finishers at the Korn Ferry Tour Championship giving him status at minimum inside the top 175 players eligible to compete on the PGA Tour. He’s studied the schedule and expects to get into around 16 Tour stops with his status. The rest will depend on how he plays.

“The rookies get reshuffled every five weeks,” he said. “So there’s no time to slack off. You need to come out ready to play.”

Even though he’ll turn 37 this November, Covello isn’t the oldest rookie in his graduating class. Scott Harrington is 38 years old, a Portland native and played well in his hometown at the year’s final event to earn his card. Still, rookies are rookies in any sport.

“One piece of advice I was given,” Vince said with a laugh. “Don’t let the other guys in the field know your hotel room number if you’re staying at the resort. Guys will charge stuff to the rookies.”

Knowing how to travel, practice and rest are things Covello says he figured out early in his well-traveled career. But he says he’s learned a few things on the course about himself in just the past few seasons.

“The last few years I figured out how to keep a job,” he said. “I’ve learned you can keep the stress off, play freer. You have to figure out how to move forward past your good and bad moments. How to hit your best shot as your next shot.”

Covello has now been on both sides of that ceremony at the end of the regular season. While a few tears were shed with those close to him who helped him achieve his goal, it was mostly joy he felt standing on that green with his PGA Tour card.

“I’ve been on that green watching my friends graduating in the past,” he explained. “I told my self I wanted to be that guy toasting champagne. I never put my little card down. I walked around with it one hand in front of my chest and a glass of champagne in the other.”

“I’m looking forward to getting my feet wet,” Covello said. “But golf is still golf. We’re all trying to hit it down the middle and on the green and make a birdie putt.”

Here’s hoping he makes plenty of those.

Coaches and QB’s Make the Difference

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When it comes to where the University of Florida and the University of Georgia football programs have gone in the last ten years, it’s apparent where the success or failure in Gainesville or Athens comes from. To win in either of those places you need a coach with an offensive philosophy and you need a quarterback to get the job done.

That’s nothing new in the last thirty years in the Southeastern Conference. Steve Spurrier brought that idea to a defensive minded “Don’t make a mistake” SEC in 1990 and revolutionized how to win in the conference and in turn in college football. Dubbed the “Fun ‘n Gun,” Spurrier’s offense put up numbers, touchdowns and wins at a record pace. He made no apologies about scoring and not worrying about out-scoring the opponent. When you’d ask Steve something about the Gators’ defense during his mid-week press conference, he’d say “You’ll have to ask Coach (Bobby) Stoops about that.” And Stoops would have his own press conference when Spurrier was done.

Going back thirty years, the two schools’ football programs are dominated by two coaches: Steve Spurrier at Florida and Mark Richt at Georgia. Both were offensive-minded coaches who were willing to spread it out, throw it around and recruited quarterbacks to do it. Spurrier had Shane Matthews, Terry Dean, Danny Wuerffel, Doug Johnson and Rex Grossman running his offense. Richt recruited David Green, D.J. Shockley, Matt Stafford, Aaron Murray and even Jacob Eason although he never played for Richt.

SEC passing records and conference titles followed both coaches and their quarterbacks in Athens and Gainesville. Since Spurrier’s departure nearly 20 years ago, Florida has had only one real offensive run under Urban Meyer. Meyer’s another coach who’s looking for skill players who can run, throw and catch.

Neither his off-putting personality nor his penchant to recruit players on the edges of eligibility and the law stopped Meyer’s offensive juggernaut. He wanted to score points and recruited players to do that. While Ron Zook brought Chris Leak to Florida, it was Meyer who won a National Championship with Leak behind center. And when Leak committed to Florida, it opened the floodgates for other skill players to make their way to Gainesville.

Meyer convinced Tim Tebow to join him in Gainesville, outdueling Alabama for the quarterback’s services. Another National Championship followed along with a laundry list of quarterback records amassed by Tebow.

So what’s happened since then?

Once the Meyer era ended the Gators turned to Will Muschamp to lead the program. Muschamp is a solid coach, but he’s willing to win games 21-17. Not only does that not work in the SEC any longer, it also doesn’t please Gator fans.

“We just didn’t win enough games,” Muschamp said at his departure press conference. He was exactly right but an inspection of his quarterbacks probably reveals why. John Brantley, Jacoby Brissett, Jeff Driskel, Tyler Murphy, Skyler Mornhinweg and Treon Harris all started for the Gators under Muschamp. With Muschamp’s philosophy, none flourished in Gainesville. Brissett, Driskel and Murphy all transferred. Brissett and Driskel are still in the NFL. Murphy starred in his final season at Boston College.

With the promise to revive the offense, Jim McElwain arrived in Gainesville to much fanfare. His problems started when Will Grier became ineligible and transferred to West Virginia where he had a stellar career. Gator fans then watched Luke Del Rio, Malik Zaire and current placeholder Feleipe Franks drive the points and win totals down. Turns out McElwain was part of the problem, not the solution and his acumen for recruiting quarterbacks remains in question.

Georgia’s quarterbacks in the last twenty years also follow their success. Joe Tereshinski, Joe Cox, Hutson Mason, Greyson Lambert and Faton Bauta all started games of varying degrees for the Bulldogs but without much success.

Both Dan Mullen and Kirby Smart fill the role needed to win in the SEC and on the national stage in today’s college football climate. Mullen has stuck with Franks and Smart inherited Eason but recruited Jake Fromm and even Justin Fields to Athens.

Mullen is quick to point out that 17 of the top 25 quarterbacks in Franks’ recruiting class have already transferred.

“He’s stuck it out, and he’s continued to work and stay through different adversities, to continue to grow, to continue to develop,” Mullen said of the Gators projected starter for 2019. “And he’s starting to reap all of the rewards of that now with how he finished last year.”

At 6’6” and 227 lbs. Franks is a prototypical quarterback that wins in college football these days. He can throw and run, something Mullen has encouraged him to do. He made the outlandish statement, “I want a fourth statue,” at the SEC Media days referring to the three Heisman winners already immortalized outside of Florida Field.

Smart, despite his defensive background as a player and a coach, has had an embarrassment of riches at quarterback since becoming the ‘Dogs Head Coach and his 24-5 record reflects that. Having Jake Fromm entrenched at quarterback the last two years continues the skill player talent pipeline to Athens. The Georgia Head Coach referred to that when talking about emerging star wide receiver George Pickens who picked the ‘Dogs over Auburn.

“He knew what style offense he wanted to play in,” Smart explained. “He saw an opportunity when he saw two guys declare early for the draft. I know he wanted to have an opportunity to play with a quarterback like Jake Fromm.”

So you want to win in Athens and Gainesville? Get a coach who loves points and a quarterback who can get them.

Georgia is there. Florida might get back there, but currently the Gators are playing catch up.

Preseason Injuries Are The Worst

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Doug Marrone is probably scared to death right now.

It’s got nothing to do with wins and losses, not scoring against the Ravens, what his team might do this year or his job security. He’s too good of a coach, too good of a guy, too well respected in the league and has been around long enough to know a lot of those things are out of his hands.

What he’s scared about is preseason injuries.

Whether they happen in conditioning, OTA’s, mini-camps, training camp or preseason games, Marrone admits to losing sleep over the possibility of players getting hurt on the last days of any offseason workouts.

“It drives coaches and head athletic trainers crazy,” says Mike Ryan, the Jaguars Head Athletic Trainer for the Jaguars for their first 20 years. “It’s a nerve racking time. Its one thing to lose a guy in October but if you lose a guy in training camp? The risks are higher than a regular season practice.”

That’s one of the reasons the Jaguars sat thirty-two players including most of the projected starters in the exhibition opener against the Ravens last Thursday night.

And Marrone is right to worry about injuries this time of year.

According to NFL research from the six years between 2012 and 2017, players average 81 concussions in the preseason. There are an average of 26 ACL and 43 MCL tears all before the real games even start.

“You can’t train enough to avoid a soft tissue injury,” says Matt Serlo, the Senior Clinical Director and
Licensed Physical Therapist at PT Solutions in Ponte Vedra.

Serlo has worked with hundreds of athletes from the NFL, the PGA Tour and other college and professional leagues over nearly three decades. He sees the progress their bodies can make quickly through hard work in rehabilitation. But he admits, those injuries are unpredictable.

“Sometimes guys can actually over train,” Serlo explained. “Those tendons and ligaments sometimes need a break. Sometimes going too hard and too quick makes it tough on their bodies.”

In the past week the Jaguars have lost rookie Tight End Josh Oliver to a hamstring problem, Linebacker Quincy Williams to a MCL tear and Linebacker James Onwualu is probably gone for the year with a knee injury suffered in practice in Baltimore. All three are players who were expected to contribute this year. Oliver and Williams have a chance to be starters.

“Hydration is a big part of it,” added Ryan who also owns Mike Ryan Sports Medicine and now is the Sports Medicine Analyst for Sunday Night Football and NBC Sports.

“There’s a direct correlation between hydration and soft tissue injuries. I’d give a talk before camp about supplements, legal supplements, anything that isn’t allowing you to hydrate properly.”

New technologies are available to every player in the NFL for rehab and recovery. Cutting edge stuff like hyperbaric chambers, cryotherapy tanks, compression boots, you name it, are all available. But sometimes it just comes down to simple rest that can make the difference.

“The hamstrings are some of the longest and strongest muscles in the body,” Serlo explained. The inflammation has to go down, the body needs rest. These guys want to push, push, push because they’re on a short timeline. The best treatment out there can’t change that over rest.”

With players trying to earn jobs for the year, unlike when the season starts, some guys are going a hundred miles an hour in practice. When you get guys that big changing direction at fifteen or 16 miles an hour, it doesn’t take an opposing impact to cause an injury.

“Players are sleep deprived, they’re under stress, their immune systems are down. They could be doing something they think helps them earn a job but it creates more problems than it helps,” Ryan explained. “I try and educate them on what to drink and what to eat to give them the best chance to stay healthy.”

Research shows that If you lose at little as 2% of your body weight your mental capacity starts to deteriorate. When Ryan puts it in those terms to the players and coaches, they listen.

“Your comprehension is a little bit cloudy. The player is just as not as sharp as he was. Dehydration is a health issue but also makes a difference in performance.”

Anytime a player is hurt, Marrone takes the time to talk with them about what to expect. When Doug talks about that process, you can tell it bothers him.

“It’s just a tough situation,” Marrone said. “You thank the player for everything he put in, but you kind of know what the road looks like ahead, which is always a tough road for anyone that has an injury.”

And when you hear estimates on a return to the lineup that are inexact, it’s on purpose: nobody actually knows.

“Pro athletes respond so much faster than the weekend warriors,” Serlo said. “They’ll go the extra mile. Their bodies are so in tune with what they’re trying to do. The hardest thing to do is to get them to understand that it takes time.”

And there’s no rhyme or reason for when or where an injury might happen.

“It’s funny sometimes,” Serlo added. “Dan Marino tore an Achilles just dropping back, something he did a million times. It just happened that time for no real reason.”

Ryan says the whole injury process is unpredictable, something he learned during his 26 years in the league.

“I’ve had training camps where guys are dropping like flies. We went to Detroit in the preseason our first year (1995) and had three very serious injures in five plays. I had some camps without any. You don’t know when they’re going to come and whom they’re going to happen to. Sometimes injuries can happen in the craziest ways that you don’t expect. Some of its just bad luck.”

Colt Fever 40 Years Ago Was the Start

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There’s a bit of irony this week as the NFL football team from Jacksonville is visiting in the city of Baltimore. That’s because it’s happening nearly 40 years to the day since the NFL owner from Baltimore started threatening to leave town take his team to Jacksonville.

That’s the start of the story that ended with the NFL awarding a franchise here in 1993. The beginning was on August 15, 1979 with “Colt Fever.”

That night in August of ’79, I was mad at Jacksonville

You might know I’m a Baltimore native, born and raised. I still root for the Orioles. I was a Colts fan growing up and when then-owner Robert Irsay visited Jacksonville threatening to move the Colts here, I wasn’t happy.

I was working in Charleston, South Carolina as a sportscaster and I thought Jacksonville and Mayor Jake Godbold were way out of line trying to steal the team from my hometown. I scoffed at the idea on the six o’clock news that night. Little did I know that it was Irsay I should have had the problem with and not Jacksonville or Jake Godbold.

After negotiations with the city of Baltimore to build a new stadium broke down, Irsay started a tour of the country, claiming he was looking for a new home for the Colts.

A local Northside businessman, Doug Peeples, President of the Northside Businessman’s Club, took it upon himself to invite Irsay to Jacksonville. Irsay accepted and planned to spend two or three days here. Everybody knew he was using Jacksonville, Los Angeles and other cities as leverage to get Baltimore to build a new stadium. Jake Godbold didn’t care about the Colts’ owner’s motive. He got involved and put his campaign machine in motion to show Irsay around.

“We had a lot of things planned for Irsay being in town,” Mike Tolbert, the man who ran Godbold’s campaign for mayor and his biographer recalled this week.

“Jake asked me at the final planning meeting for Irsay’s visit, ‘What have we left out?’ and I said, ‘The people who just elected you,’” Tolbert said.

The plan to entertain Irsay in town included a trip to Ponte Vedra, a ride on the St. Johns in yacht, lunch at the River Club and a bunch of other high-end stuff.

“But nothing for the people who were going to buy the tickets if the Colts came here,” Tolbert said. “Everybody who was going to host Irsay said it wouldn’t work. It would be embarrassing. Nobody would show up. They were groaning in the background. But we decided to invite everybody down to the Gator Bowl to let Irsay know, ‘We want the Colts.’”

And with that, Colt Fever was born.

“I was really nervous about it,” Jake Godbold recalled. “I was nervous as I could be. I didn’t know if anybody would show up. Everybody thought maybe three or four hundred people might be there and I’d be really embarrassed.”

But for the promise of a free soda and a hot dog, fifty thousand people showed up on a hot August evening at the Gator Bowl. The soda was donated, so were the hot dogs. Since the stadium’s official vendor wanted nothing to do with Colt Fever, Jake’s friends from his recent Mayoral campaign got together and did the cooking. Another ten thousand couldn’t get in the stadium so they sat in their cars listened to it live on the radio.

“We didn’t think anybody was going to show up. We only had four or five JSO officers there. No ticket takers really,” said Tolbert.

After just five days of planning, Irsay flew into the Gator Bowl in a helicopter, landed at the 50-yard line and greeted the fans that Wednesday evening. There were some speeches made, a bunch of back-slapping and waving to the crowd followed.

When it got dark, they turned the lights out and 50,000 fans lit matches donated by Winn-Dixie and distributed at the gates by the volunteer youth group from the downtown department store May Cohen’s. And a chant of “We want the Colts,” reverberated through the stadium and into downtown.

“There were a lot of tight throats and I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house,” Godbold recalled.

“Irsay was a delightful guy, a colorful guy,” he added. “He was a big guy, like a big Teddy bear, always laughing but he had tears in his eyes, he was impressed. I got really choked up.”

While the Gator Bowl hosted two college football games each year and the occasional pro football exhibition, getting it up to NFL standards would be a huge undertaking.

“Irsay put his arm around me as we walked under the stadium and told me, ‘Jake, we’ll have to do something about this place’” Godbold said remembering the reality of renovating the Gator Bowl. “He was a steel guy. He told me we’d have to tear this place down. I knew it would be a long process to get a team to play here.”

Five years later, Irsay snuck out of Baltimore on a snowy night, moving his team to Indianapolis on the promise of a new, modern stadium.

But Jacksonville had made its mark.

“We got more out of him than he got out of us,” Godbold said. “I knew we had done something nobody thought we could do. I couldn’t believe all these people were coming out in the middle of the week. I knew we had done our job and the people had responded.”

Godbold was amazed that the story was picked up nationally and had created a buzz. At a meeting the following week in Washington at the White House to discuss funding for the people mover, Chief of Staff Hamilton Jordan wasn’t that interested in talking about the people mover.

“He had been playing tennis, walked in, and got a cold drink,” Godbold said with a laugh. “Then he sat down and said ‘Before I talk to you about a damn thing I want to know how you got 50.000 people in the Gator Bowl the other night.’”

“We didn’t expect Irsay and the Colts to come here, but we showed what we could do,” Tolbert said. “That night lit the fire that turned the town around. Jake had only been in office six weeks. That takes a lot of guts to pull that off.”

“I knew that night if we could hold that spirit, we could accomplish anything, it was very emotional.” Godbold added. “We needed an uplift more than we needed a team. I was more interested in what we could do for the city than getting a team.”

“The tenor in the town and the tone changed,” Tolbert explained. “Anything he could do to put Jacksonville on the stage was his goal. The Tea Men (from the NASL), the Bulls. Fred Bullard probably doesn’t consider Jacksonville for the USFL if Colt Fever didn’t happen.”

And the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars certainly wouldn’t be visiting Baltimore this week.

(Author’s note: A full accounting from the founder of “Colt Fever,” Mike Tolbert ,can be found in Tolbert’s book, “Jake!” available at local booksellers and online.)