It has been a while since the Jaguars went into the roster building phase of the year without a question mark at quarterback. Last year doesn’t count, since 2021 was such a detour from potential success with Urban Meyer in charge. Yes, we knew Trevor Lawrence was going to be the quarterback, but we didn’t know he’d be able to blossom in his second year once Doug Pederson was named the head coach. Meyer almost ruined Lawrence. Only Trevor’s talent and willingness to learn got him through that year. There were plenty of head scratching discussions about his future before Pederson took over.

Whether it’s a Gatorade commercial with a bunch of kids or sitting next to Giannis Antetokounmpo and Chloe Kim in a Breitling Watch magazine add, Lawrence is the first Jaguars quarterback in a while who has the talent and the marketability to truly be the face of the franchise on a national scale. The last Jaguars QB I saw in a magazine was Mark Brunell. And that was the cover of TV Guide in 1995. Yep, TV Guide.

So, when you’re set at the quarterback position, it sure makes building a roster around him a different kind of exercise for the personnel and coaching staffs. Free agency and the draft have the same urgency, except you’re looking to build, not reinvent your team. A franchise quarterback lets them find the other pieces to the puzzle that will help the QB be a winner. Look at what they did in Denver for John Elway, in Kansas City for Patrick Mahomes, in Indianapolis for Peyton Manning and in Dallas for Troy Aikman. In each case, they knew who their quarterback was going to be for the next ten years. So, they went about building their team, in the short and long term, to be a sustainable winner around their star in the backfield.

“I think you’re always looking,” Jaguars General Manager Trent Baalke said last week at a pre-draft luncheon and press conference. “You look at today and tomorrow. I’m pretty fortunate to work with a guy that sees the vision of not only today, but as the future unfolds. We take that all into consideration.”

Baalke and Pederson are a solid match to build the franchise, both seeing what they need with the same vision. And it helps to have Lawrence as a constant.

When it comes to the draft, there’s a lot of communication between the coaching staff, the scouts, and the personnel department. You’d be surprised how many teams don’t have that kind of give and take when it comes to taking a player.

“If there’s a discrepancy, we’re going to talk about that,” Pederson chimed in. “We might even go to the tape and watch more film on a player or bring in the position coach, or bring in the scout that looked at this guy and just exhaust everything we can and make sure we’re in agreement that when we pick a player, we’re on the same page.”

Baalke revealed there are about 127 players on the Jaguars draft board and the Jaguars will lean on how they have those players ranked and the value they put on them to make decisions.

“There’s going to be enough depth in the draft that there’s going to be a player at a need position we have valued in that area that will be there when we pick,” he explained.

And that includes the first round. With a quarterback heavy top of the draft, that’ pushes other position players down the board. Quarterbacks are always valued, so picking at 24th in the first round, they’re confident a player they really like will be there.

“It’s too hard to play all of the scenarios in your mind. You go through it all then the draft happens and three picks into it all of your work is shot. I think you’re better off seeing the board, trusting the board, the value is set then letting it unfold,” Baalke said.

In fact, the Jaguars GM admitted that picking at 24, there might be two or three players they like who have been “pushed down” to their spot and they’ll take one of them. Trading down is always an option, but the Jaguars don’t think they’ll have to this year. Somebody they really like will be there.

I asked Baalke if there was a “best player” in this draft. It’s a question I ask every year, knowing they’re not going to give me an answer. Baalke said, “That’s a loaded question.”

“That’s what they pay me for,” I responded, kind of snarky I admit.

“Well, they don’t pay me to answer those,” Baalke continued. And then said, “But I think there is a best talent in this draft, yes I do.”

I’ll try and ask that question again after the draft is over. I’ve gotten great “off the record” answers in the past. “Orlando Pace,” was the quick answer one year. “Not even close.” And he was right. Pace went onto a Hall of Fame career.

“The guy we got,” was the answer the year the Jaguars drafted Blaine Gabbert with the 10th pick overall. That didn’t pan out so either the respondent was lying, which wouldn’t be unusual, or he actually thought that after seeing Gabbert on tape and working out. It’s certainly possible they thought Gabbert was the best player in the draft that year. When you watched him practice you wondered, “How do we ever lose?” But he couldn’t transfer that performance to the stadium under the lights.

One thing the Jaguars have restored under Pederson is a culture that can breed winning. You can tell walking in the locker room that these guys like each other, work hard for each other and want to win. Pederson recognizes that and is always looking for not only talent, but a player that will be a good “fit.”

“I take that responsibility back to the players,” Pederson explained. “I don’t want to micromanage the locker room whatsoever. If we sign a guy who’s not a good culture fit, our locker room can handle that. We did that a couple of times (in Philadelphia), and the locker room just handled it.”

“Our scouts do an outstanding job of spending time with player and family members and coaches, anybody we can talk to, to get answers on players,” he continued. “So, we feel like the ones that are on the board are all great fits for us. Our locker room can absorb that, and they either buy in, or they won’t be here.”

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.

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.”

There’s always been a two-way discussion for NFL teams about the college draft: Do you pick for need or just draft the best player available?

For the Jaguars this year they were picking for something different: No drama.

Head Coach Doug Marrone stressed that point several times leading up to the draft and the Jaguars followed through, picking players who aren’t bringing a lot of baggage to Jacksonville.

“Is it big? Absolutely,” Marrone said of getting rid of any drama surrounding the Jaguars. “Is this something that we’ve stressed? Yes. But we were able to do that without sacrificing the talent or potential.”

They call these types of players “high-character guys” in the NFL. There is a theory that you need some “low-character guys” on your team to win in the league just to keep the other team honest.

This year, the football staff and the personnel department had a plan and they stuck to it. The draft was deep so they felt like they could not only get the player they liked but the kind of player they liked as well.

“So our goal was, ‘we have 12 draft picks, we don’t want to be flippant with the picks.’’ General Manager Dave Caldwell explained. “It’s easy to be like, ‘I have 12 picks, so let’s use this pick to trade up and trade that,’ but let’s just let the draft come to us and still get talented players that fit our culture, fit our locker room and that can come in and compete at a high level.”

There are team captains all over this Jaguars draft. Ten of the first eleven players selected by Marrone and Caldwell were named captains in college. The eleventh, Davon Hamilton (who might have the biggest arms you’ve ever seen) played on the defensive line at Ohio State where Chase Young was the captain but was described by Gene Smith, the Buckeye’s Athletic Director as, “A Sunday kind of guy. He’s disruptive. He’s smart. I love Davon because on top of everything he’s a great human being.”

So coming out of this draft, even if the Jaguars don’t win, you can have them all over for dinner.

“When they’re good players and they’ve been good in the locker room and they’re good on these college campuses and in their community, and then really what that means is now you can coach football and whole focus can be on football,” Marrone explained.

The Jaguars had specific needs, but he wanted players to come into the locker room not worried about their “brand” or their Instagram account. Marrone was looking for workers. He personally talked to college assistants about what kind of workers and teammates potential draft picks were, looking for a specific type of player to come to Jacksonville.

“I really believe that when you don’t have a lot of things going on on the outside with this person or that person or whatever it may be, and you can totally focus just on football when you’re in the building, you have a chance to be a pretty good player,” he added.

That’s not to say they didn’t address their needs, or give up on getting talent either. This draft was so deep at the positions the Jaguars were looking for they could get the guys they wanted without a lot of jumping around. Marrone was quick to say the Jaguars didn’t “settle” on anybody. He claims the players they took early were the highest rated players on their board.

“That is the one thing. I don’t want these players from a situation of, ‘Well, you know what. Jacksonville went ahead and they took two guys that are really great guys, but they may not be talented,’ Marrone said. “We feel that we have gotten great talent, guys that can produce at positions that we needed, but we did not have to go and take them [out of position]. They were the highest rated players on our board when we were going to go and pick.”

And Marrone even leaned on some of his current players when deciding whether a potential draft pick would fit with the culture he’s trying to build. He talked to Jawaan Taylor about C.J. Henderson. They were teammates at Florida. Same with D.J. Chark and K’Lavon Chaisson at LSU, and he was happy with the answers he got.

“There’s players in our locker room that know these players, and that’s important for me to get a sense of, ‘Hey, are these guys going to fit? Are they what we’re looking for?’ Marrone said of his internal research.
“They understand the challenges we have as a team. ‘How are they going to be there?’ I was very comfortable with that. I couldn’t be happier about where we are right now. Who we’re bringing in, we still have that responsibility trying to create this locker room.”

Prior to the draft, Caldwell said that his twelve picks gave him some “ammo” to move around and get the players the Jaguars wanted. So we anticipated some fireworks. That just didn’t happen. The draft unfolded just about how everybody predicted. No big surprises.

“I haven’t been reluctant, I just felt like we had options at every pick,” Caldwell said after day two.

Every time the Jaguars were getting close to their pick, Caldwell said he was ready to make a trade to move up to get who they wanted but he didn’t need to.

‘”Okay, well there’s two picks to go and we feel good about three players or five players,” is how explained what happened. “So there’s no real need to trade up. There’s been enough players that we like. I think sometimes patience pays off.”

This collaboration between Marrone and Caldwell has worked well: at least at getting players and the kind of players the Jaguars wanted. You can disagree with what they’re doing, but they’re building the team they think will work. The model of everybody reporting to one football czar, didn’t work, at least from a personnel perspective.

Marrone told everybody what kind of team he wants the Jaguars to be and the coaching staffs and personnel department worked together to find the players that would fit that model.

Caldwell says the idea they presented to Owner Shad Khan about how to build a team after Khan fired Executive VP Tom Coughlin has worked.

“The process has been really good and it’s been really seamless and enjoyable on my part with our coaching staff and our personnel staff,” he explained. “Good dialogue where everyone can speak freely and not be judged.”

I’ve often thought that the Jaguars should reflect what kind of people live in Jacksonville. Like the Steelers reflect Pittsburgh, the Bills reflect Buffalo and the Ravens reflect Baltimore: Tough, hard working, “I don’t care who gets the credit let’s just get the job done” kind of guys. You know, the anti-Jalen Ramsey type.

This draft seems to have accomplished that. Now let’s see if they can play.

It’s a crossroads for the Jaguars franchise, again, against Tennessee in Nashville this week.

There are a lot of factors that go into the cauldron of who the Jaguars are now and who they’ll be in the future but they’re all lined up for the game against the Titans. How they perform could set the course for the foreseeable future. A win and there’s hope. A loss and they’re looking again to the future.

In back-to-back games, sandwiched around the bye, the Jaguars have been outperformed, outpaced and outclassed by division opponents. It’s not a good look for a team that’s been specifically built to compete in the AFC South. The Texans looked more talented, faster and smarter while dismantling the Jaguars in London. Last week, the Colts flat-out manhandled the Jaguars defense, pushing them around at will.

The team is healthy, outside of the tight end position. They’ve gone “back to the fundamentals” according the Head Coach Doug Marrone. The attitude is good in the locker room and they have six games left to right the ship on the 2019 season. Jaguars’ radio color analyst Tony Boselli predicted the team would go on a 7-0 run after the bye. Right now, going 4-2 to finish the season would look like a massive victory.

There’s a lot of finger pointing outside the stadium, a lot of it directed at Marrone and his coordinators, Todd Wash on defense and offensive coordinator John DiFillipo. Wash says, “We have to get off our blocks,” DiFillipo says, “We have to be better on third down.”

“It’s scheme, it’s motivation, it’s culture,” is the cry from interested, ticket-buying parties.

And while those things might be a factor the answer is actually simpler than that:

Play better.

Looking around the Jaguars roster, they’re pretty talented. But they’re not playing to what the roster looks like on paper.

The offensive line hasn’t developed the way it should with a combination of high draft picks and free agents involved. D.J. Chark is having a breakout year at wide receiver but the rest of that position looks pretty ordinary. On defense better play at linebacker would change their run stopping ability as well as help with pass rush up front and pass coverage behind.

Going to Nashville isn’t the exact recipe for the Jaguars to get well. They’ve lost five straight there, including last year’s embarrassing, Thursday night, nationally televised 30-9 loss that included a record tying 99-yard touchdown run by Yulee’s Derrick Henry.

In another Thursday night contest earlier this year the Jaguars beat the Titans here behind two TD passes from Gardner Minshew and a stout performance on defense.

Oh, how things have changed since then.

Switching quarterbacks and getting healthy seems to have invigorated Tennessee. Their improbable come-from-behind victory against Kansas City two weeks ago has buoyed their confidence. They’ve won three of their last four and are coming off their bye week. In contrast, the Jaguars had gotten to 4-4 but have looked miserable since.

With Nick Foles returning, the Jaguars have a few more options on offense and should have a level of consistency a veteran quarterback can bring. But with only nine rushing attempts last week against the Colts, they became predictable and easy prey. Leonard Fournette is frustrated, Foles says don’t press and freak out, and DiFillipo says it’s a “fair question” to ask about getting away from the running game so quickly in Indy. (As if he has some secret in his pocket that none of us know about.)

At least Head Coach Doug Marrone was straight forward in shouldering the blame.

“I thought we needed to score points in a quicker fashion and I think that’s what led to the increased pass attempts, so that’s on me as the head coach,” he said this week. “And I know we need to be more balanced moving forward. I was wrong, I made a mistake.”

Doug is easy to like and his quality as a “stand-up guy” is laudable. But that’s the kind of mistake a coach of his experience shouldn’t make. And it’s an unforgiving game. Opponents exploit your mistakes and make you pay. It’s a results oriented business and now, the Jaguars aren’t getting results.

But you can’t just point at Marrone and say he’s the problem. You have to go deeper into the organization to give his position some context.

When Owner Shad Khan tapped Tom Coughlin to run the football operation, Coughlin said there were two coaches he could work with. One was Marrone, the other reportedly was former Jaguars defensive coordinator and former Falcons head coach Mike Smith. Both have distinct personalities and styles, but their core ideas on how to coach align with Coughlin’s. No matter who the head coach is for the Jaguars, with Coughlin in charge, he’ll be expected to coach a certain way.

“I look at the situation as being perfect, at least for me,” Marrone told Sports Illustrated last year. “He takes some things off my plate that are a little outside the realm of the team.”
When Khan assembled Coughlin, Marrone and General Manager Dave Caldwell, the decision was met with skepticism throughout the league. Khan was advised against it. Too many egos, too many cooks in the kitchen his friends said. But the success in 2017 and a trip to the AFC Championship game quieted the critics.

For a while.

Earlier this year Khan was asked about Coughlin’s future with the franchise and he said something like, “I couldn’t imagine anyone better.”

Although Khan gave the Jaguars brass a vote of confidence after last year’s 5-11 season, he did set some parameters.
“There were far too many long Sundays over the last three quarters of the season,” he said when he announced Coughlin, Marrone and Caldwell would be retained for this year. “And that cannot repeat itself in 2019.”
But is it?
There’s no denying Coughlin’s success in New York, winning two Super Bowls in 2008 and 2012. But those are both nearly a decade ago and the league has changed. While the Jaguars are built to run the ball, throw it off play action and stop the run on defense, the rest of the league has gotten faster and more innovative on offense. You’re not going to beat the elite teams 17-9 any longer. You’ve got to be able to score points in bunches and the Jaguars aren’t built that way.

Is the current Jaguars decision-making brain trust willing to move in that direction? Probably not. Do they believe a team built to win the Super Bowl a decade ago can still win in the NFL? Probably so.

I don’t buy into noted NFL scholar Jalen Ramsey’s assessment that Coughlin didn’t care to understand “this generation of guys — us as players or as people in general.” Do you think Bill Belichick is worried about understanding “this generation of guys?” Football is about blocking and tackling, not about whether or not you’re hurting somebody’s feelings.

Which leaves Khan with the ultimate decision. Let this group add a few pieces (including two first round picks in 2020) and see what happens or blow it up and start over.

Again.