Top of the morning to everyone!!
We've got a lot of stuff going on today as the entire NFL world revolves around Jacksonville! Because of this our Jaguars are receiving a whole lot more pre-game press than normal, and I'm going to go ahead and document as much of it as I can. Hopefully people say terribly inaccurate things and we can enjoy how foolish they look.
Let's start with Peter King:
Indianapolis, 23-21. And Peyton Manning had better have a late drive up his sleeve. He's going to need it.
I imagine the folks at ABC and Monday Night Football are pretty pleased about tonight. At least its not the terrible Atlanta/NYG matchup...
Keeping with the SI Writers theme, Bucky Brooks has his "How to beat the Colts" story:
* Take care of Colts tight end Dallas Clark. The fourth-year pro's emergence has given the Colts an effective counter to Cover Two schemes. Jacksonville should have MLB Mike Peterson take a deeper drop down the middle of the field. By keeping Peterson deep, the Jaguars can keep double coverage on Reggie Wayne and Marvin Harrison outside without Clark hurting them in the middle of the field.
I'm all in on Grinding...
Dan Shanoff waffles a little bit, considering that he's a "fan":
The amazing folks at Football Outsiders worked with ESPN to look at Joseph Addai and Maurice Jones-Drew. The story is here
The long and the short of the story is that Addai is having a career that is so far like Terrel Davis, and Jones-Drew is really hard to compare to anyone.
Big Cat Country considers itself friends with the Fine folks at JagNation As usual, Charlie Bernstein has a Great Pre-game article. Charlie notes the problem Jacksonville could have trying to pressure Peyton Manning:
Putting pressure on the Colts quarterback just became even more difficult for the Jaguars as their best pass rushing defensive end, Reggie Hayward, was just downgraded on the injury report to questionable, with a bad hamstring. If Hayward can't go, Bobby McCray will likely fill in. After having a fantastic season rushing the passer in 2006, McCray has pulled a disappearing act thus far in 2007. While starting four of the Jaguars five games this season, McCray has exactly three tackles and no sacks. What's worse is that he hasn't even been close to any opposing quarterbacks prior to the post-game handshakes, and he still struggles at the point of attack, and teams like the Colts will likely try and run directly at him. This disappearing act that McCray has pulled, comes off the heels of an offseason spent bickering about his contract. It now appears that the Jaguars organization made a solid move when they decided to let McCray play out his restricted free agency season before giving him a very lucrative contract.
I'm not much of a supporter of ESPN, but I have good news to report. The Jaguars game will be broadcast on ESPN Deportes This is fantastic because there is a huge Latino population in Florida, and they get to see a great game broadcast with announcers that are probably way better than the terrible trio that we'll get.
Seriously, this is pretty good news for the Jags. Anything that expands our accessibility is fine by me.
The Florida Times Union ponders what could have happened if Wayne Weaver had chosen Dungy over Tom Coughlin :
Asked what Weaver was looking for, Dungy responded: "I think he was looking for Tom Coughlin, and that's the way he went, and it worked out great for them. They had great success."
Also, one time Jags security told Tony that his son couldn't be on the sideline. Here's what Tony Did:
"The guard blinked, and I finished my thought. 'You might want to double check with your head coach before you do that, however.'
"That was the last I heard of the issue. No one has brought it up since."
Dungy said last week that he won't have any of his children on the sidelines Monday night because it's a school night.
Finally, don't forget to see what is being said over at Stampede Blue You know they'll be all excited about their Colts over there, but they're good folks so I can tolerate it.
Time for me to start getting some stuff together for the game. I've got a short list of interviews I'm supposed to do before the game, and I'll be letting you know what's up when that happens.
Also, I'll be tailgating with Jagnation in the Arthritis Center Parking Lot, so come up and see me if you're there!
-Chris