Jaguars head coach Doug Marrone talks self-scouting, Foles

The Jaguars will be resetting the bar this week after going through tough self-scout evaluations. While players were on their bye week, Jaguars head coach Doug Marrone says the team’s coaching staff worked to figure out what went wrong, and how they can adjust for the final seven games of the season. With the playoffs still in reach, the team must work to rebound from a 4-5 record and last place within the AFC South.

“During this week we went through a ton of self-scout,” Marrone said today during his Monday morning press conference. Marrone says he typically handles the team phase of the evaluation.

“I talked to the players today about the turnovers, where we are, how we fought during the season and we’re at minus two right now. I also talked to them about field position, which we’re 30th in the NFL, which is something that we have to address and improve upon.”

The Jaguars currently have thrown four interceptions, but have fumbled the football 15 times, losing eight. On the defensive side of the football, the team has recovered three fumbles and have picked off the ball seven times. Turnovers have been the Achilles heel of this team. The Jaguars have won at every game in which they were positive in the turnover margin.

With veteran quarterback Nick Foles, the Jaguars will hope turnovers are more limited, however over the past two seasons Foles has fumbled the football 10 times in 13 games with the Philadelphia Eagles.

Able to achieve a record of 4-4 with Gardner Minshew II as the team’s starting quarterback, many spectators believe that is about how much you can ask for out of your team, however, Marrone feels the team should have won all of their games, and he doesn’t put it all on Minshew’s play, he blames himself.

“So, he did everything that he can possibly do to put us in that position, and I go into thinking, ‘Hey listen, we’ve got to win everyone.’ I think when you look around the league there’s a lot of players that have won a lot of games as a backup quarterback. “

Marrone cited New Orleans Saints’ backup quarterback Teddy Bridgewater as a backup quarterback who has had success in relief of Drew Brees. “I know for us at the end of the day I think we all could have done a better job,” Marrone said when asked why team’s are having success around the league with backup quarterbacks.

Now with Foles, Marrone feels the team is still ready and willing to move forward, and he believes Foles will already be up to speed without much rust. Early on in the process, the Jaguars did not want anyone around Foles, however, recently the team has ramped up the amount of speed around the veteran quarterback.

“He’s been practicing now, so we’ve already gone through the progression of, OK, when he first came back we were focused on doing this, and then we were focused on just really building it up,” Marrone said. “We just started putting him on the move, doing a bunch of different things and he’s up to speed as far as where he should be physically, and throwing and all of that. So, we’re not going into this week limiting anything that he should do.”

The Jaguars have hit a crucial part of their season where they can ill-afford to lose many more games, especially this upcoming week against the Indianapolis Colts. Correcting issues the team has coming out of a bye-week is essential to having success moving forward.

“We’re going to focus on having a good day today as an extra day and work our butts off to put ourselves in position for a good performance when we go on the road versus Indy.”