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The problems Jacksonville Jaguars head coach Urban Meyer continues to have with his team are becoming a major concern.
While it makes sense for a newly hired head coach to have issues early on starting their time with the team (especially one who has never coached in the NFL before), this team continues to be very Jekyll and Hyde on both sides of football.
Put simply, they can’t string together four quarterbacks of winning football.
This has been evident for five weeks, and what is becoming Following As time goes on, there is a general disconnect between Meyer and the rest of the football team.
At least that’s the impression Meyer gave time and time again as he led press conferences after the team’s five losses.
After Sunday’s 37-19 loss to the Titans, Meyer questioned some of the decisions again, blaming himself not only on himself but (perhaps inadvertently) on others around him. The answers to some questions were not satisfactory in themselves and even prompted Following questions from fans and the media.
Here are my five takeaways from Meyer’s press conference:
1. It seems no one knows if a quarterback is in the team’s toolbox
At one point in the game, the Jaguars had the ball on the Titans’ 1-yard line. The situation was a 4th and 1, and it came right after the umpires canceled the appeal of a four-yard touchdown from Trevor Lawrence on the previous play.
The Jaguars did not convert and Tennessee would take over. However, what happened to the coin is the main problem.
Along the way, Jaguars running back James Robinson was pulled out of play for running back Carlos Hyde. Once the team reached the 5-yard line, they then threw the ball twice, before attempting a run with Lawrence.
Fourth from the 1-yard line, the Jaguars handed the ball over to Hyde, instead of Robinson who, at this stage of the competition, led the football on 8.4 yards per stroke or 143 yards on 17 races.
Here is the result :
Hyde couldn’t score, but the possibility of handing the football over to Robinson was never an option, and neither was a quarterback, at least according to Meyer.
“And the stealthy quarterback, he’s not quite comfortable with that yet,” Meyer said in the postgame, referring to Lawrence. “We practiced this. I know it might sound silly, but when you’ve never done it, it’s something we need to keep doing, so you can make that call in this critical situation.
Meyer is right. It’s silly.
Without going into the nature of football and practicing a quarterback sneaking five weeks into the regular season, Lawrence’s answer to whether or not he was comfortable with the ball made what Meyer did. said all the more worrying.
“No, I feel comfortable,” Lawrence said after the game when asked if he was comfortable running a sneak.
“Obviously I haven’t really raced it before in a game, but I feel comfortable. This is something that we have worked on. We trust our guys up front, we trust our backs in this situation. Obviously I’d love to get in there, but if we do the game, it’s like no one is saying anything, but it’s a TFL, and it obviously doesn’t look good.
“So we can all get better. But no, a QB sneak is something we can all access and I feel right at home. “
The Jaguars haven’t led a stealthy quarterback throughout the year. But the idea that a 6’6 “quarterback wouldn’t be comfortable with it, or that the team wouldn’t feel comfortable enough with him to do it five weeks after the start of the match. the season is worrying. ”That was a puzzling response from Meyer.
2. Meyer returns the ball, does not want to “micromanage” the use of players
There’s no need to rehash the same situation listed above, but using Hyde in the contest team’s last hard training was another puzzling decision for the Jaguars.
This is apparently not a decision the head coach of the football team can make, and something that he says he should have made, but just doesn’t want to micro-manage his coaches.
“I just met Bev (offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell) and we talked about it. I don’t micromanage who’s in the game, ”Meyer said. “I should have – James runs really hard, but so does Carlos. I have to go see if anything happened with James in this situation.
Meyer, the team’s head coach, said he have micromanaged who was in the game for Jacksonville at the time.
But the most concerning part of the quote wasn’t even that.
Meyer wondered, even after meeting the squad (which included coaches and players) if Robinson was “fooled” during this situation.
When Robinson met the media, he made no mention of any bumps or bruises that would have kept him from entering the game – simply saying he trusted his teammates to perform whatever is called for.
In addition, the team’s head coach should know if any of their best offensive players have been injured, especially since the drive lasted several games and Robinson was not in the game for one. critical moment.
3. The Jaguars Finally Research Myles Jack
The Jaguars started this year moving to a 3-4 base defense, moving players including starting linebacker Myles Jack. With Joe Schobert shipped in trade to the Pittsburgh Steelers, the team gave Jack the “green dot” on his helmet, meaning he’s the one calling up defensive play for the team.
Jack wore the point in four regular season games, calling team games and taking calls from defensive coordinator Joe Cullen through the headset in the headset.
But throughout the year, Jack hasn’t seemed very adept at making sure everyone is properly aligned before taking on his own mission.
Although he has said on numerous occasions that he is comfortable with this responsibility, the Jaguars felt the need to take that away from Jack for today’s competition, choosing to give it both to safety Rayshawn Jenkins and linebacker Damien Wilson.
After the game, Meyer said the team researched Jack and now realized he was playing better. without the responsibility:
“We evaluated this because Myles plays three positions – base, nickel, dime, and that’s something we’ve been working on. He played his best football. We just did some research, he plays better when he doesn’t have to make the call. So we gave it to Damien and also to Rayshawn. So you were right when you saw that.
The problem here is simple: why the Jaguars not do some research ahead of the season when the decision was made to give Jack the green dot. In 2019, Jack owned that responsibility and his game suffered, according to the former Jaguars coaching staff.
In 2020, Jack played the best season of his career, and a lot was the result of his ability to play without thinking too much, without the responsibility of making sure everyone, including himself, was lined up to do this. that they needed to do.
While this blunder is not entirely attributable to Meyer, it is his responsibility as the team’s head coach to do this “research” ahead of the season, or at the very least, to interview his staff beforehand. the season, not five games later.
4. Confusion over defense is also an issue for Meyer
Today was another day when Meyer wondered what was going on … to field.
Meyer was asked why the defense sometimes seemed confused about what covers they were awarded. He said that was a question he had too, something the team will need to correct.
“We kind of asked for the same thing on the sidelines, and we need to fix that. I see the same thing you see, ”Meyer told the reporter. “I see a defense that sometimes plays exceptional elite football, like the first half against the Bengals and the last part of the game we just played.
“But then we put pressure on the quarterback and the guy is wide open. It was a misunderstanding. It was a man’s blanket, and the guy didn’t cover his man. It’s that simple. “
When asked if the team were confused or not due to the call from several players in defense, Meyer didn’t seem to have a clue. And said he was going to ask the same question.
” I do not think so. That’s a question I’m going to ask, and you are certainly welcome to ask it as well.
Sure, a reporter will ask Cullen this week what the problem was. But what question did Meyer ask the coordinator, or any coach, on the sidelines, otherwise what was the problem? He questioned him during the game, was there just no answer?
5. There are mixed signals from the team’s QB and head coach
A final puzzling event would come as the team hit their 20th straight loss dating back to last season, tied for the second longest losing streak in NFL history. When asked how desperate the team is for a win, Meyer didn’t mince words: they are desperate.
“Desperate for a win, desperate for the way they’re going to work every day, every week. Desperate for a win, ”said Meyer. “But we can’t worry about the past, worry about the future and a trip to London and try to win. Some guys play their cocks. But, yes, we are desperate for a victory.
That’s the kind of answer one would give when they’re really desperate, and the Jaguars are certainly in that category, unable to complete games so far this season.
What is concerning, however, is the message that is sent both by Meyer and then again by Lawrence. Lawrence’s response reflected a more balanced response, which one would expect the head coach to say. The team, quite simply, cannot be desperate.
“You can’t be desperate,” Lawrence said. “You just have to keep working. We are going to win games. We’re going to turn around. We all thought today was the day we were going to achieve that first victory and it wasn’t.
“We didn’t perform enough on the home stretch, but we’re going to find a solution and we’re going to turn the tide. It will be a lot of fun when we do. But yes, the locker room, we want to win. All of us guys have so many hard workers.
“Everyone is so invested. It’s not a team where we have guys who aren’t really committed or who don’t care. Everyone is in it. So it will come. When you’ve got guys like that and you’ve got talent, and we’ve got enough talent. So I’m not worried, but we have to get some wins. “
Lawrence said the team are not discussing the losing streak in the locker room because it is not good for a team to linger or think of something as negative as that. The message should not be confusing between the two main leaders of the team. But it certainly seems to be.
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