Chains
The head coach has responsibility for the performance of his team. When Jack came here, he was touted as a defensive coach—that’s his specialty. There had to be a better scheme for getting at least some pressure on Manning. For a coach, it’s never enough to “put players into position to make plays.” The win-loss column is what decides if you stay in town. And for those waiting for D Harvey’s “progression”—forget about it. Even by rookie standards, he looked awful last night. While he shouldn’t be expected to be dominant, he should show some game and promise for the future. He didn’t.
On the bright side, MJD may be unstoppable next year. The off season will be a tough one. We need to shore up our offensive line, and we didn’t do much to improve our defensive line. Toug decisions loom ahead!

JDR wasn’t on the field last night – don’t blame him. Its the players, mainly defensive side of the ball. Its been that way all year. Start with those 2 Gators, Reggie Nelson is lost out there and can’t tackle. 2008 draft was wasted on Derrick Harvey. Could have had him or someone with equal talent if they stayed where they were in the draft, nobody else rated him that high. This defense accomplished one thing this year – it made opposing QBs look like All-Pro’s in the 4th quarter.

What Jaguars team are we talking about? This year’s Jaguars was completely mediocre and we have the record that a mediocre team deserves. Movethoschains is right, JDR cannot come off the sideline and make plays. He can only put players in positions to make plays. I will admit he is not the next Madden or Ditka, but he is a good coach.

North Florida has completely unrealistic expectations from a football program. Face it, we all learned about football from watching UF, FSU, Miami, and Georgia, well when was the last time any of those programs (especielly UF) had a season record of 5-11 (lets face it that is what we headed for). We all expect the Jaguars to win and keep winning every week and every season, no excuses accepted. Well, that might be possible if the NFL worked like college football, but an NFL team plays a 16 game schedule, 20 if you include the pre-season and half of those games are away. If we could have a schedule like UF with 3/4 of the season at home and of that a quarter to half of that season is against opponents that cannot compete. Imagine what would happen if UF had to go north of Mason Dixon line in November, nevermind late December.

As fans we need to be realistic and realize that at its core this is a good team. We have had a bad season, no denying that, and there are various reasons for this bad season and enough blame to go around throughout the organization, players included. Look at what is going well, Shack Harris is probably going to be fired, his player selections in the draft and free agency on average have not been very successful. That said there he has not gone to the media to defend himself or criticized JDR, Wayne Weaver, or the players. There is no power struggle going on in the front office or on the sidelines between the coaches. The owner of the team still backs the team and (for the most part) the city of Jacksonville. Our core players are good, maybe not at the level of Peyton Manning or Tom Brady, but they are elite and elite players are rare.

Without a doubt there are holes on the team that need to be filled. But, lets be real who expected the Jaguars to lead the Colts into the fourth quarter and then almost tie and possibly win the ball game. This Jaguars team is not going to the Super Bowl, we aren’t even going to the post season. Did you really think the Jaguars were going to win? I didn’t and if a loss can be good this one was. We have been complaining that JDR has lost this team, that they aren’t playing with emotion, and that the players aren’t playing to their full potential, well I don’t think you can say that about last night. Reggie Nelson blew a few coverages and David Garrard threw a pick that went back for a touchdown, two game deciding mistakes. If the Jags had played with this much intensity and drive throughout the year our record would be much better. Unfortunately, last night we played one of the best QBs in the game ever and he didn’t make any mistakes.

Lets face it, the better team won. The Jags will be back, the fundamentals in the organization are good. As fans we expect a Super Bowl bound team every year, but it doesn’t work that way. You can’t force Super Bowls, we have now tried twice and failed, the Redskins and Cowboys try repeatedly and have been failing as well. We need to be patient and let any Super Bowl appearence occur organicly.

And I realized how bad this season has been when I wasn’t even that upset over losing. I was just happy we were in the game in the final seconds. Remember this is a Colts team who needed one win to make the playoffs and with their final game being against the Titans, they really wanted to win this one. I was proud of the performance and just happy that the final Jag game I will get to watch this year was a good one, even if we didn’t win.

I was wondering what you guys thought about the last play. After Garrard was sacked, we scrambled to get one last play in, and I know I saw 1 second left on the game clock as they snapped it, but they blew the game over. Now, I realize we probably weren’t set, but I have seen tons of game where a referee still announces a penalty even though time has expired and it’s just a formality. I saw them get the ball snapped in time (if I’m wrong, then it doesn’t matter), but I think they needed to throw the flag or let them play. Did anyone else see or think this, or did my eyes deceive me?

If the pass had not been picked and gone for twenty yards another fan would have been saying, “They need to keep passing!” As fans we all think a little bit of high school football and some Madden makes us experts. That said we do rely on the same few plays too much, but that problem goes back to the receivers. We have no speed at the position….. I think we just need a few more players and we will return to where we were last year.

Socaljagsfan, I see your point. I think they worry about using MJD too much, after him there isn’t much depth. If Fred had been healthy I think we would have just run run run and quite possibly won the game.