Jaguars Improving … and Winning

At the season’s halfway point, the Jacksonville Jaguars were the laughing stock of pro football and it appeared as if they might actually go winless for the entire season.

Then, something strange happened. They started winning. Entering the final three weeks of the season, the Jaguars had won three straight games and were 4-9.

That level of success had running back Maurice Jones-Drew looking to stay with the team and hoping to sign a new contract.

“I want to be here,” Jones-Drew said. “It’s a fun environment. It’s different than I’ve ever been a part of. It works. It takes time to build anything. It’s starting to turn around for us, and we’re starting to play well. That’s exciting.

“I just want to be a leader. Back when I was young and doing some wild stuff, we had older guys that would be like, ‘All right, calm down.’ Well, now I look around here and I’m like, ‘All right, where are these older guys at?’ Oh, I’m one of them. So you’ve kind of got to change some things, especially with what we’ve been going through.”

That environment is led by first-year coach Gus Bradley, who rarely talks about winning games. Huh? Let Bradley explain.

“Wins and losses are external so I don’t want go to there,” he said. “I don’t want them to be motivated through wins and losses. That’s why you’re not hearing me talk about wins and losses.

“Our only focus is on getting better. I really believe that should be the focus. Stay in the zone and don’t let distractions come in. I talk to the team about it, ‘Don’t revel in the accomplishments.’ Don’t go on and on and on about it. People pat you on the back and say good job and that’s great, but it can take you out of your zone.”

Remember the Titans

After the passing this season of Tennessee Titans owner Bud Adams, his son-in-law Tommy Smith is the man in charge. Thus, it will be up to him after the season to decide whether to keep head coach Mike Munchak or start over with someone new.

Smith isn’t hesitant to let everyone know it will be a very difficult decision to make.

Said Smith to the Tennessean, “It’s awful. I have known Mike for 30 years, and it’s hard to find someone of higher character, with greater integrity than Mike Munchak. He is a very intelligent guy and a good man. We would like things to work out for Mike in that capacity.”

Smith also insists he won’t be as quick on the trigger as was his father-in-law.

“Bud in the past would fire people at the drop of a hat,” Smith said. “I think sometimes you need to keep the gun in the holster. … I think we need to sit here and look at these three weeks, and let’s play hard. Let’s see if we can win some games. When we sit down with Mike at the end of the season I expect Mike to come in and tell me why he thinks we’re in the position we are, what he thinks needs to be done for us to improve.

“This thing didn’t fall apart overnight, and it’s not going to be put together overnight either. But we certainly had higher expectations than what we are seeing right now, across the board, I can assure you of that.”

Smith does like the way the team plays hard. He said, “If there is anything that is a bright light, I believe the players are still playing hard for Mike, and I think that is a testimony to his character. A lot of these other teams are not. We just need to finish out the season the best we can and then we’ll evaluate and see where things stand.”

Said Munchak, “We have 22 or 23 new guys on the roster this year from last year at this time. There’s going to be change. The good thing for this team is there’s going to be less change needed in the personnel department. I think there’s some decisions that will be easier to make. I have a front-row seat to what’s going on, so I’m going to voice what I think is best for this team. You just can’t do it all when you want it. People want stuff done immediately, but unfortunately it doesn’t work that way in this league.

“I’ve been here three years. I’ll say it again: I think this team in a lot of spots is much better than it has been since I’ve been here, but there’s things that are holding us back. That’s stuff we have to fix. That’s stuff we’ll talk about when the season’s over. You can’t do all the things now that you need to do. They (Smith and general manager Ruston Webster) will decide if they think that makes sense or if there’s a better way to do it.”

Young Speaks

With all the chatter over the last week about Mike Shanahan and Robert Griffin III, perhaps the best perspective came from ESPN commentator and Hall-of-Fame quarterback Steve Young, who said of Shanahan, “I know him well. He gives very little tolerance for quarterbacks – including me, John Elway, whoever else is playing – if you’re not playing well and you’re not preparing to throw to five receivers every play. He puts quarterbacks in position to have to read sideline to sideline. That’s a huge task for young players, and he wants guys that are willing to go work that out and play well, and if you’re not going to play well he’s going to find someone else.

“When he calls plays, he wants five guys threatening the defense. There’s a lot of offenses in this league that don’t do that – they have five receivers go out, but they’re only throwing to two, or one even, and that’s a lot easier for young players. Mike asks a lot and if he doesn’t get it, he’s the kind of guy who says, ‘Well, let’s bring the next guy. I want to take a look,’ even with what that means on the team, the city, the organization, everything. It doesn’t matter. ‘I want quarterbacks who are performing and performing well.’”

Really?

At a league meeting this week in Dallas, commissioner Roger Goodell acknowledged that there will be discussions about potentially taking instant replay decisions out of the hands of on-field officials and doing it from a centralized location like New York City where for the sake of consistency one person would do the replay reviews.

Sounds good, but there seems to be one obvious glitch. When there are often eight or so early games being played, what happens if there are more than one play that needs to be looked at? No one can ever predict when there will be a challenge or a touchdown or a change of possession needing to be reviewed, and then right in the middle of the evaluation comes another.

Sorry guys, need to wait a bit until I get done this one done. Let’s see how the league figures that out.