Jaguars owner Shad Khan addressed the team earlier this week in an attempt to address Jacksonville’s futility in what was described, via Mike DiRocco of ESPN.com, as a non-confrontational address.
However, another takeaway that appears to have emerged from the meeting: Gus Bradley‘s job could well be safe throughout the season. Due to an organizational philosophy under Khan that steers clear of in-season coach changes, the embattled fourth-year leader looks to have the rest of this season to stake his claim to the Jags’ job, Ian Rapoport of NFL.com reports (Facebook link).
Rapoport adds a change could be made after the season if this spiral continues, and the Jags are coming off another embarrassing defeat, a 33-16 loss to the Raiders that saw multiple defensive starters get ejected and another penalized for a racial slur. The Jags are 14-40 under Bradley and 16-54 in Khan’s four-plus seasons as the owner, the first of which a 2-14 campaign in 2012 under Mike Mularkey‘s sideline leadership. Khan fired Mularkey and then-GM Gene Smith following the ’12 slate.
Khan asked several unspecified players their opinion of why the team is struggling, per DiRocco, and inquired what he could do to help the effort. Jacksonville is now 2-4 after receiving a decent amount of preseason hype.
“He said, ‘Hey, what can I do to help? Why have we gotten off to a slow start? What we can do to turn it around?’” a Jags source said, via Ryan O’Halloran of the Florida Times-Union. “A lot of guys got up and talked, players and coaches and he sat back and listened. It was good. He didn’t make a bad thing worse.”
The former Seahawks DC would certainly be a Black Monday candidate at this rate regardless of the support Khan is showing presently.
What happened to this team? Losing faith
Bortles has played terrible. His mechanics have regressed and he forces throws. His touchdown pass this past weekend was thrown into triple coverage and was a miracle that it wasn’t picked off. While it doesn’t help the running game has struggled (due to mainly offensive line injuries), Bortles has thrown way too many bad/forced passes.
Bortles has been aboslutely terrible. His mechanics have regressed and he forces too many throws. His touchdown this past week was thrown into triple coverage and it was a miracle that it wasn’t picked off. It hasn’t helped that the running game has struggled (partially due to offensive line injuries) but too many of Bortles’ passes have been bad/forced throws.
Bortles, Have to do matter, or ship him out!!! I never like this draft pick anyway.
they built up that defense but wheres the Oline and tunning game….shouldve tried to shorten games by running the ball more and not asking Bortles to win every game with his arm.
The O-Line has been hurt so I’ll give them a slight pass (especially since Linder, their best O-lineman is hurt) and the lack of a running game could be expected. But you’re right, they need to run the ball more. You can’t expect Bortles to throw it every down when teams aren’t the least bit concerned about a running game.