Jaguars Groundhog Day?
It almost sounded like a repeat of last week’s Thursday press conference. A bad loss the Sunday before, hoping the team can bounce back, the Wednesday practice showing signs of life and the Thursday practice a confirmation of the effort.
“I thought today was a big straining practice even without pads on,” Head Coach Gus Bradley said again this week “Very good. Attention to detail, you could just see a big emphasis on it as there has been, but I felt it more. It’s like players holding players accountable, coaches holding players accountable and the whole mix.”
But doesn’t he say that every week? I mean Gus is an upbeat guy and somebody who see the glass half full, but the Jaguars are 1-4 so how can he always be talking about “good practices?”
“I’ve got to give the guys credit, right?” he said, answering his own question. “You said is this a resilient team and then they come out Wednesday and they work like that, like I said, I always try to tell you what’s going on. That’s what’s going on. It was good.”
OK fair enough, Bradley is very honest in his dealing with the media, rarely trying to paint a story a different color. But during the taping of his weekly television show, he admitted that part of a team that’s supposed to be winning games to show they’re better than they are, is to actually win the games.
“We have some of the pieces getting better. Quarterback, wide receiver, corner back. All of that’s making progress. But you’re right, we need to finish games and win to make any claim to being better.”
While some of the injured players will possibly make their way back into the lineup this week, Paul Posluszny, Denard Robinson and Sen’Derrick Marks, it could be a game time decision for starting tailback T.J. Yeldon. Bradley says Yeldon has a high football IQ so he could miss practice and still play in the game.
“He’s pretty sharp, he’s a guy in meetings that can pick things up really fast, he understands it, football comes very easy to him. I think he displayed that. We did a two minute drill, he caught a pass and went right out of bounds.” Marks, on the other hand, has passed the physical tests and is looking to get mentally ready to see his first action, hopefully this Sunday. Sen’Derrick said he wanted to be pushed, physically and mentally by his teammates and coaches to be sure he’d be ready.
“Yeah, yesterday I talked to him and said I’m going to get after you pretty good to help you fight through it. He said to me today, you can say whatever you want Gus, this is my own battle in my mind and I’ve got to get it right.”
Next week the Jaguars play in London, trying a different travel schedule for the third consecutive year. They’ll leave next Thursday, practice at the Arsenal practice ground on Friday, attend a fan function on Saturday, play the game on Sunday, get on the plane and come home. The Jaguars haven’t won in London and have been blown out by both the 49ers and the Cowboys. This year against the Bills they’re still concentrating on their own game and not the fact that it’s in London.
“I want to make sure going into this game we continue to build off our strengths, not ‘this is a tough game’ and we drop more than our strength level. We’re doing these things good let’s keep these strengths and add to them and now let’s act on the things we’re not doing very well and get those things going as well.”
