Everyone loves a good underdog story. The Jaguars were trailing by 10 points in the first quarter and exploded the rest of the way to get a 32-16 win over the Patriots in London.
The only problem is the Jags weren’t the underdogs against New England, they were actually massive favorites. But a win is a win. Just don’t let one win against a bad football team distract you from the fact the Jaguars return to Jacksonville with a 2-5 record. There are phrases like “don’t judge a book by it’s cover” and “it’s not how you start it’s how you finish” that will get thrown around after a win. Sure, this team could still technically go 12-5. That ain’t going to happen. But let’s go all the way back to the beginning.
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It was 2022 and the Jaguars and the Lions were in the exact same position picking Nos. 1 and 2 in the draft, respectively. Each team won nine games that season. But fast forward to now. The Lions are considered one the best teams in the NFL and the Jaguars are well in the conversation for having a top 5 pick in the draft again. The Jaguars went from ice cream Doug Pederson to Doug pulling his hair out.
I’m not trying to be the party pooper because I know the Jaguars won this week, but that doesn’t serve as a distraction from the issues that exist. Don’t let one win against a team that has openly admitted to being in a rebuild disrupt the agenda of displeasure around the Jaguars organization.
The Jaguars got a win Sunday but their second-round draft pick Maason Smith was inactive and didn’t play. Do the Jaguars look like a team that can afford to redshirt a second-round pick? And they traded Roy Roberson-Harris earlier in the week. That should have opened more snaps up for Smith, but nope. We can say Trent Baalke missed on the pick. We can say the coaching staff doesn’t know how to get him ready or even call it an internal power struggle. Either way it shows that the head coach and the general manager are not on the same page. That is a problem.
Teams can’t succeed on the field when guys calling the shots can’t agree off the field. Going back to the first chapter of this book where we talked about the Lions, they hired Brad Holmes and Dan Campbell at the same time in 2021. Those two have been on the same page since Day 1 and it shows. A win is a win, but don’t let it distract you from the whole story. Trevor Lawrence always says it is hard to win games in the NFL. But it shouldn’t be this hard. The agenda should remain unchanged. It is time for a fresh start.