JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – In a short period of time, Doug Marrone has turned out to be a funny, authentic, clear-eyed realist when it comes to the Jacksonville Jaguars football team.
Rather than talk about where they can get to or what the positives are, Marrone knows the team isn’t good. “You are what your record says you are,” is a famous quote about the NFL. Which is why Doug said after the first week, “We have a long way to go.”
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“I look at it that way,” he said Friday after the Jaguars’ third OTA. “I think you could say we are progressing and we are doing some things and we got off to a good start. I think it is more, ‘Listen we have a lot of work ahead of us.”
You might think, ‘It’s only May,’ but that’s not where the mindset is for the Jaguars Head Coach.
“It is not like, ‘Breathe out. This time of year we are not playing, blah, blah, blah’ he explained. “No, in my mind it is like, ‘Hey, listen, we are playing.’ With everything we do, we are getting ready to go. We have to ramp up the competition. We have to ramp up what we are doing.”
Admitting that there are positive things happening on the field, including Leonard Fournette catching the ball better than expected, Marrone put the emphasis on results instead of progress.
“I am just being honest. We are a team that won three football games,” he said. “I would be lying to you guys if I came up here and said everything is great. Listen, we only won three football games. We have a lot to prove. I am not the type of person that is going to sit up here and sell some ‘BS’. I am not going to do that.”
So reading any kind of preseason predictions about the Jaguars or any other team seems silly in May. Injuries, holdouts and a whole variety of unforeseen events can change a team’s fortunes in a flash. Plus, Doug thinks practicing in “pajamas” doesn’t give you an accurate picture.
“I think it is hard for any coach to sit up here and say where their team is at now and how it is going to go once the pads and the hitting start to come,” he said, emphasizing ‘hitting’ the way any football coach would. “I want to get our team ready and prepared conditionally, practice-wise, tempo-wise, so that when we do start practicing, the physicality is something that we can stand and we can practice through that to try to create a toughness. We have to become a much tougher team. We have to be able to finish better. That stuff is on tape. It is not like I am making that stuff up.”
If you want to get a sense of what kind of guy Doug Marrone is, you only have to listen to him for a bit when he’s talking about something besides football. When asked about Memorial Day and living in Jacksonville as a military town, Marrone’s answer was very revealing and authentic. That’s why I wanted to include it in it’s entirety.
“That’s one of the lessons or things I try to teach to the players that if you’re going to do things that are charitable, you’re going to do things that are the right things to do, you don’t do them so everyone in this room can cover them and say what a great guy. You do them because you believe in it. Everywhere I’ve been for Memorial Day, I’ve always wanted to make sure that we understood what the day is about and I’m not standing on a pedestal and I’m not telling everyone what they should do or how they should treat everyone, but for me, if I’m in an airport and I see someone from the military I always try to say thank you. I asked our team today how many people know someone in the military and almost every person raised their hand. I think sometimes that we take for granted we play this game, we’re in this sport, we have so much freedom and yet we have to understand there are people that are putting their lives on the line for us. For me, explaining that to the players today and trying to bring someone in to make it real and we brought in Mike Hicks, who on August 1, 2007 had a bomb go off in Baghdad and take his leg and he came in here with his family. What’s funny is that before he started talking to the team he said, ‘Coach, I’m kind of nervous talking to these guys.’ And I said, believe me they’re more nervous than you are. I think it was a great message and I take a lot of pride that we come from a town with a lot of military. I just told our players come Monday, we’re obviously all off, just take a minute. Just take a minute, sit back and be thankful. That’s how I feel and I know you probably soft-balled that question, but I’m not doing it for the media stuff, I do it because it’s the right thing to do.”