Mr. Brownstone
Footballguy
Gus Bradley's Jacksonville Jaguars springing from full makeover
Albert Breer
NFL Media reporter
Week 9 seemed like no time to give the Jacksonville Jaguars a week off last fall. To anyone, that is, but their head coach.
It was then that Gus Bradley started to see that what he and general manager David Caldwell had set out to accomplish some 10 months earlier was starting to take root. Jacksonville was coming off a 42-10 drubbing at the hands of the San Francisco 49ers in London, and hitting the midway point of the season at 0-8.
"It'd be easy to come back and say, 'OK, you guys get three days off, then we're going back to work at the end of the week,' " Bradley said, prior to a walkthrough this past Wednesday. "But I really sensed the team was getting better. We were improving each week. So we gave them the week off. And you'd have to ask them, but I think they looked at that and said, 'We're 0-8, but we can see that we're getting better.' That validated everything."
The validation that would come next was modest (a 4-4 finish to the 2013 season) but striking (when compared with the team's winless start).
That's why, when you count teams that are on the rise heading into the 2014 campaign, it's impossible to exclude this resurgent group. Last year, Caldwell and Bradley tore the whole thing down, churning the roster in the way the Seattle Seahawks did when GM John Schneider and coach Pete Carroll arrived in 2010 -- something Bradley witnessed firsthand as the team's defensive coordinator. The hope is that this Jaguars season will reflect how the club is building itself up.
Few teams -- not just contemporarily speaking, but in recent memory -- have undergone the radical change that the Jags have over the last year and a half. Just seven draft picks remain from previous regimes, and 39 of the 53 players now on the active roster were acquired by the (still) new guys. Only five projected starters (receiver Cecil Shorts III, right tackle Cameron Bradfield, tight end Marcedes Lewis, quarterback Chad Henne and linebacker Paul Posluszny) predate Caldwell and Bradley.
And maybe that's why, in the section of the game notes where most teams have a chart titled "How (Team X) Was Built," Jacksonville has a table that says "How the Jaguars Are Being Built." This is, admittedly, still a work in progress. The difference in 2014? Bradley doesn't need to sell the program anymore. The players have already bought in.
"One common theme, every team has in camp is to just get better every day," Bradley said. "It's almost a cliché. And that's how we talk, but we try to take it to another level. I was in college football for 20 years. And at that level, you have developmental coaches, because it's, This is who we have, and we have to make them better. In the NFL, you can fall into the trap where it's, If we don't like who have, we'll get someone better.
"So we were trying to have that developmental mindset in the NFL: This is who we have -- let's get better."
Part of the reason they needed to have that mindset was because they got, and continue to get, so young. Twenty-six of their 53 are rookies or second-year pros, and only Seahawks import Chris Clemons and kicker Josh Scobee are older than 30.
And that's by design, but the way Bradley sees it, it also puts pressure on the coaches to accelerate the development of the team's youth -- something he saw in Seattle.
"When you look at the really good teams, they're experienced and fast," he explained. "Some teams are experienced and slow, and that's not ideal, or inexperienced and fast. We're still pretty inexperienced, but from last year to this year, we've gotten more speed. We're getting fast. So overall, you look at our team, we have inexperience, but we're faster. For us, the challenge is we're in this race to maturity, to become an experienced, fast team as quickly as possible."
Part of the plan to do that, eventually, will mean getting first-round pick Blake Bortles on the field.
That just isn't happening now, not even after the rookie quarterback aced the statistical (32-of-51 passing for 521 yards and two touchdowns with zero interceptions -- a 110.0 QB rating) and eye tests during the preseason. On one hand, Bradley says, "It's hard to learn to swim reading a book." On the other, while acknowledging that Bortles is a Henne injury away, Bradley is stressing development with his young signal-caller.
"With Chad, we're looking at it and (saying), Here's a guy that has experience and, with another year in the system, is playing faster," Bradley said. "We've got a guy that's experienced and playing fast, and that's what we want. Blake's got inexperience, but he's really progressing fast, and there are so many learning opportunities for him playing behind Chad."
The plan going forward is to feed Bortles a limited number of first-team reps in practice -- in addition to his scout team work -- to keep pushing his development. Meanwhile, he'll continue the individual work with offensive coordinator Jedd Fisch in trying to become more of a passer where he's been a thrower, and more of a quarterback where he's been a football player.
Therein, Bortles will deliver what Bradley wants from all of his players: to have them constantly compete. To that end, the coach has pointed out to the team what that word -- compete -- meant 200 years ago. It wasn't to fight against another competitor. It was simply about someone striving to be his best.
And when he looks back to 0-8 now, that foundation being laid is what he remembers and is one reason why he feels so good about what's ahead -- starting with Sunday's road game against the Philadelphia Eagles.
"It was a great learning experience for me," Bradley said. "It challenges your conviction, it challenges your ability to be consistent and make sure you're the same guy. The challenge is not to get out of whack -- where this week, you're doing this, and next week, you're doing that. It's important to have conviction."
It's clear the Jags do.
Albert Breer
NFL Media reporter
Week 9 seemed like no time to give the Jacksonville Jaguars a week off last fall. To anyone, that is, but their head coach.
It was then that Gus Bradley started to see that what he and general manager David Caldwell had set out to accomplish some 10 months earlier was starting to take root. Jacksonville was coming off a 42-10 drubbing at the hands of the San Francisco 49ers in London, and hitting the midway point of the season at 0-8.
"It'd be easy to come back and say, 'OK, you guys get three days off, then we're going back to work at the end of the week,' " Bradley said, prior to a walkthrough this past Wednesday. "But I really sensed the team was getting better. We were improving each week. So we gave them the week off. And you'd have to ask them, but I think they looked at that and said, 'We're 0-8, but we can see that we're getting better.' That validated everything."
The validation that would come next was modest (a 4-4 finish to the 2013 season) but striking (when compared with the team's winless start).
That's why, when you count teams that are on the rise heading into the 2014 campaign, it's impossible to exclude this resurgent group. Last year, Caldwell and Bradley tore the whole thing down, churning the roster in the way the Seattle Seahawks did when GM John Schneider and coach Pete Carroll arrived in 2010 -- something Bradley witnessed firsthand as the team's defensive coordinator. The hope is that this Jaguars season will reflect how the club is building itself up.
Few teams -- not just contemporarily speaking, but in recent memory -- have undergone the radical change that the Jags have over the last year and a half. Just seven draft picks remain from previous regimes, and 39 of the 53 players now on the active roster were acquired by the (still) new guys. Only five projected starters (receiver Cecil Shorts III, right tackle Cameron Bradfield, tight end Marcedes Lewis, quarterback Chad Henne and linebacker Paul Posluszny) predate Caldwell and Bradley.
And maybe that's why, in the section of the game notes where most teams have a chart titled "How (Team X) Was Built," Jacksonville has a table that says "How the Jaguars Are Being Built." This is, admittedly, still a work in progress. The difference in 2014? Bradley doesn't need to sell the program anymore. The players have already bought in.
"One common theme, every team has in camp is to just get better every day," Bradley said. "It's almost a cliché. And that's how we talk, but we try to take it to another level. I was in college football for 20 years. And at that level, you have developmental coaches, because it's, This is who we have, and we have to make them better. In the NFL, you can fall into the trap where it's, If we don't like who have, we'll get someone better.
"So we were trying to have that developmental mindset in the NFL: This is who we have -- let's get better."
Part of the reason they needed to have that mindset was because they got, and continue to get, so young. Twenty-six of their 53 are rookies or second-year pros, and only Seahawks import Chris Clemons and kicker Josh Scobee are older than 30.
And that's by design, but the way Bradley sees it, it also puts pressure on the coaches to accelerate the development of the team's youth -- something he saw in Seattle.
"When you look at the really good teams, they're experienced and fast," he explained. "Some teams are experienced and slow, and that's not ideal, or inexperienced and fast. We're still pretty inexperienced, but from last year to this year, we've gotten more speed. We're getting fast. So overall, you look at our team, we have inexperience, but we're faster. For us, the challenge is we're in this race to maturity, to become an experienced, fast team as quickly as possible."
Part of the plan to do that, eventually, will mean getting first-round pick Blake Bortles on the field.
That just isn't happening now, not even after the rookie quarterback aced the statistical (32-of-51 passing for 521 yards and two touchdowns with zero interceptions -- a 110.0 QB rating) and eye tests during the preseason. On one hand, Bradley says, "It's hard to learn to swim reading a book." On the other, while acknowledging that Bortles is a Henne injury away, Bradley is stressing development with his young signal-caller.
"With Chad, we're looking at it and (saying), Here's a guy that has experience and, with another year in the system, is playing faster," Bradley said. "We've got a guy that's experienced and playing fast, and that's what we want. Blake's got inexperience, but he's really progressing fast, and there are so many learning opportunities for him playing behind Chad."
The plan going forward is to feed Bortles a limited number of first-team reps in practice -- in addition to his scout team work -- to keep pushing his development. Meanwhile, he'll continue the individual work with offensive coordinator Jedd Fisch in trying to become more of a passer where he's been a thrower, and more of a quarterback where he's been a football player.
Therein, Bortles will deliver what Bradley wants from all of his players: to have them constantly compete. To that end, the coach has pointed out to the team what that word -- compete -- meant 200 years ago. It wasn't to fight against another competitor. It was simply about someone striving to be his best.
And when he looks back to 0-8 now, that foundation being laid is what he remembers and is one reason why he feels so good about what's ahead -- starting with Sunday's road game against the Philadelphia Eagles.
"It was a great learning experience for me," Bradley said. "It challenges your conviction, it challenges your ability to be consistent and make sure you're the same guy. The challenge is not to get out of whack -- where this week, you're doing this, and next week, you're doing that. It's important to have conviction."
It's clear the Jags do.
