It’s been a lost decade for the Jacksonville Jaguars. Though they’ve done great work in free agency, will 2017 be any different or more of the same?
It seems so long ago, but the Jacksonville Jaguars used to be one of the NFL’s most consistently strong teams. Two years into their brief history, Jacksonville played in the 1996 AFC Championship Game against Bill Parcells’ New England Patriots.
Twice would Tom Coughlin’s expansion Jaguars team play in the AFC Championship in the 1990s, but Jacksonville remains one of four franchises to never appear in a Super Bowl: Jacksonville, the Cleveland Browns, the Detroit Lions and the Houston Texans, who have only been around since 2002.
Coughlin would leave North Florida for the New York Giants after former owner Wayne Weaver fired him in 2002. In New York, Coughlin would win two Super Bowls over the Brady/Belichick Patriots. Jacksonville had some gridiron success under Coughlin’s replacement in Jack Del Rio, but he too would be canned after the 2011 NFL season.
Jacksonville has been arguably the worst team in football since Del Rio’s firing. The Jaguars have picked in the top-five of every NFL Draft since 2012. Their picks have been largely horrible. Justin Blackmon and Luke Joeckel have busted. Blake Bortles has had one decent year at quarterback and two bad ones. Dante Fowler Jr. has been injured and had off-the-field issues. At least Jalen Ramsey and Leonard Fournette look promising.
While the drafts haven’t been as fruitful as the Jaguars would have liked, this does feel like a season that could be one in the right direction for Jacksonville. Reaching into one’s past is rarely good, but having the energetic 70-year-old Coughlin back in the building in an executive role should provide a spark that this team is lacking.
Though many didn’t like it, promoting from within to make former offensive line coach Doug Marrone the new Jaguars coach seems like a very pragmatic move. He’s twice been a decent head coach before with the Syracuse Orange and the Buffalo Bills. Marrone had been with the team the last two years and knows what he’s getting into. The rival Tennessee Titans are seeing success with former interim head coach Mike Mularkey at the helm, so maybe this is a sign of good things to come in Jacksonville?
After a 3-13 campaign a year ago, that’s just not tolerable from this team in 2017. There is too much talent on this defense and too many interesting players at skill positions offensively to win fewer than five games. That’s not a high bar, but should be one this team should scale over. Frankly, it’s time for this club to not be picking in the top-five any longer.
This team’s strength will be on defense. Even though former head coach Gus Bradley is gone, the Jaguars are doing right by letting defensive coordinator Todd Wash stick around to run the Cover 3 scheme this fall. Jacksonville has playmakers at all three levels of its defense. It could very well be a top-10 unit in football. If it looks anything like the Mike Smith defense under Del Rio, this could be an exciting unit to watch.
We know that Ramsey has all the talent in the world at safety. He was one of the better defensive players as a rookie last year. Ramsey could be in line to reach a Pro Bowl with the typical second-year just we see out of many young players. He will also have other great secondary players around him in A.J. Bouye and Barry Church coming over in free agency from the Texans and Dallas Cowboys, respectively.
Guys like Telvin Smith and Paul Posluszny are solid at the linebacking corps. What the Jaguars get out of Myles Jack in 2017 will only make that position group better. Then there is the potentially dynamic defensive line duo of Calais Campbell and Malik Jackson. Both players were pried away from solid organizations like the Arizona Cardinals and the Denver Broncos in free agency. Together, they can be that battering ram Jacksonville needs up front to win on defense.
While the defense should be a good to great one, anything beyond mediocrity from the offense would be a huge get for this Jaguars team. Marrone might be a good offensive line coach, but it’s been less than stellar up front for Jacksonville for a long time now.
The Jaguars did get a high-upside tackle in the second round in former Alabama Crimson Tide standout Cam Robinson. As long as he’s not Joeckel, it should be an upgrade long-term. They did get good news on August 7 that Branden Albert will unretire and play for the team this fall.
The Jaguars did essentially trade away tight end Julius Thomas to get Albert, but it wasn’t like Thomas and Bortles had a great rapport in the passing game. By a wide margin, the best offensive player for the Jaguars is the sensational wide receiver Allen Robinson. The dude made Christian Hackenburg look competent with the Penn State Nittany Lions in college. He did the same thing for Bortles in 2015.
Robinson should be better than he was last year, assuming Bortles isn’t as bad as he was in that delightful 3-13 campaign. There’s also Allen Hurns to sling the ball to. He’s an excellent No. 2 wideout in his own right.
But let’s be real, so much of this season’s success hinges on Fournette’s ability in the running game. Though powerful, are we sure he can do more than run between the tackles? Fournette looks to be in that Adrian Peterson prototype as a bell-cow back, but this is a different NFL he’ll be playing in. It’s almost better to be a versatile scat back than a tradition bell cow.
Overall, Jacksonville is probably not a playoff team, but could play spoiler in the much improved AFC South. Getting close to .500 would be a great year for this football team. Picking sixth through 10th in the 2018 NFL Draft is sadly a major accomplishment for this team.
X-Factor
We could go many different ways here, but Jacksonville ultimately begins and ends with the play at quarterback from Bortles. He was a former No. 3 overall pick out of Central Florida. Though a talented kid out of Orlando, Bortles has struggled to get into the rhythm of games in the first game. He has shown an ability to move the sticks, albeit mostly in garbage time.
While he has the prototypical build of what a team would want out of a franchise quarterback, his mechanics were terrible in 2016. The arm slot of his release was all over the place and the footwork had no method to the madness. Though Bortles was probably dealing with an upper body injury all season, everybody is beat up by Week 17.
This is a make-or-break year for the fourth year pro. He has to shine like he did at times for the 2015 Jaguars. If that involves Robinson bailing him out in the vertical game or Fournette in the ground game, so be it. Jacksonville cannot win more than five games if Bortles struggles under center for the third time in four years.
Best Case
If it all goes right for the Jaguars, meaning the defense enters top-eight territory, Bortles played like he did in 2015 and Fournette is this year’s Ezekiel Elliott running the football, Jacksonville can be somewhere in that 7-9 to even 9-7 range. Normally, that would put the Jaguars in the conversation to win the putrid AFC South, but the division isn’t rancid anymore.
Jacksonville will play a last-place schedule against two teams it should beat in the Cleveland Browns and the New York Jets. The AFC South does benefit from getting the NFC West this year, meaning the only certain loss there is to the Seattle Seahawks.
Jacksonville could be favored in as many as five games this season, including a divisional bout at home or two. Limiting offensive turnovers is key, but Jacksonville can be respectable this year. Winning the AFC South might be a stretch, but hovering around .500 is in play.
Worst Case
It’s last year all over again. While it doesn’t seem likely that Marrone will struggle as badly as Bradley did at head coach, he could run into some issues with Coughlin. If those two clash and owner Shahid Khan has to pick a side, it could be another disastrous two-to-four win season for Jacksonville.
Bortles winds up being a bust like Byron Leftwich and Blaine Gabbert before him. Fournette hits the metaphorical rookie wall and gets hurt. The offensive line is still a wet paper bag under Marrone’s watch. Wash’s defense underachieves, tunes him out and mails in it right in time for Thanksgiving.
Khan might have to do exactly what he is not willing to do in pull the rug out from somebody before giving him a fair chance to succeed. Obviously, general manager David Caldwell is gone and possibly Marrone or Wash. Khan will be hiring a search firm to see if there is any way they can bring either Patriots coordinator or Smith out of Tampa to be their next coach. All three say no and the Jaguars end up hiring a mediocre coordinator instead.
Final Word
It’s getting really old to keep saying this will be the year the Jaguars finally get back to good. Expectations were high in 2016 and Jacksonville massively disappointed. Going into a fourth year with Bradley at head coach was their undoing. If they couldn’t get Josh McDaniels to leave Foxborough, then Marrone was a sneaky, under-the-radar hire.
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This is still probably a bottom-half team in the AFC. However, Jacksonville will find a way to play with pride. They will not be an easy out for teams this fall. Expect the Jaguars to win a few more games than you’d think. Days of picking in the top-five are over! Moving on up to picking in just the top-10. Baby steps for this AFC cellar dweller, baby steps.