MVN: Most Valuable Network

A year ago, the Jacksonville Jaguars finished up the 2007 season with an 11-5 record, and a playoff berth.  A year later, they have completely flipped their fortunes, winding up with a 5-11 record, a team in disarray, and a top 10 draft pick to contemplate.

During the Jack Del Rio era, the Jaguars have done one thing consistently: play inconsistently. 

The Jags were once noted as a team that nobody relished seeing on their schedule because of their physical, punishing style of football.  Teams now salivate when they see Jacksonville on their calendar because they know that they will face an ill-prepared unit that may play well enough in spurts, but will find a way to implode in the end.  The Jaguars are the team that opponents almost instinctively pencil in as a win now. 

How the mighty have fallen.

Starting with a soft training camp that was steeped in Super Bowl hype and delusions of grandeur, the Jaguars clearly started to buy into their own press.  Conditioning was never put at a premium, and the end result was a team that lost 40% of their starting offensive line to injury in the first game of the season.  The team was supposed to have an advantage at home early in the season where heat and humidity were the things that they would be accustomed to, while their opponents would wilt.  None of that happened.  The Jaguars won only two home games all season long, and in the games where they should have had an advantage, they were the unit that couldn't handle the heat. 

There is plenty of blame to pass around.

Whether you look at analysis that centers on David Garrard being the most hit quarterback in the league, or the receiving corps holding the league title for the most drops, or a defense that lost their identity, the Jaguars have gone into a freefall.  In a desperate attempt to regain control late in the season, Jack Del Rio shifted his coaching tactics from a player's coach to a task master.  He shuffled lockers and benched a player that had been voted by his team mates as a captain.  The move backfired as it only further exacerbated the split that was developing in the locker room.

On the field, it became clear in the final Houston game that there were players on the roster who had all but given up.  They quit.  The team and the coaches denied it after the fact, but it was clear that there were players already focusing on their post season plans.  The denials were hollow, and the sense that players had quit was confirmed in post-game interviews following the loss in Baltimore yesterday when Maurice Jones-Drew implied that this was indeed the case. 

In his post game comments, Drew said, "We've just got to find guys that want to come out and give 110 percent.  If you want to be a part of the Jaguars, the new deal is gonna be that we're not quitting, we're fixing to run down the field and hit you in the mouth."

What was the implication?  Guys were not giving 110%, and they were quitting. 

Even Paul Spicer hinted at this when he said, "You're thinking, 'Oh, this game doesn't mean anything. Our season is pretty much over.' Things like that. I hope nobody did feel like that, but there were still things that went on where you kind of thought to yourself, 'Wait a minute, we can't let THAT go on."

He hoped players were not thinking in that manner, but based on what was going on out there on the field, it was obvious even to him that there were guys that did indeed quit.

The Jaguars showed a complete lack of discipline on a weekly basis.  This was not just the result of a breakdown in coaching.  The team lacked any real leadership in the locker room, and when a player did attempt to assert himself, he wound up in the dog house with Jack Del Rio.  Mike Peterson discovered this very quickly, and his career as a Jaguar likely ended on the field in Baltimore yesterday. 

From the top to the bottom, a lack of discipline, focus, and leadership created the mess that became the 2008 Jacksonville Jaguars.  Nothing short of a complete rebuild is going to rectify the problems that exist for this group, but the one area that will not be addressed is the head coaching position.  With the extension that Del Rio signed, the team is locked into him for at least another couple of seasons.  In the interim, the revolving door for coaches that has become the most prolific in the entire league over the past six seasons will continue to spin wildly.