Locked On Titans - Daily Podcast On The Tennessee Titans - Ultimate Division Crossover - Jaguars
Episode Date: February 13, 2020Ultimate Division Crossover - Jaguars Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices ...
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This is the ultimate crossover here on Locked on Jaguars.
I'm joined by Cody and John Houston, Locked on Titans,
and my boy Tyler Rowland.
You know him because we do this twice a year already.
Locked on Titans, Tyler Rowland.
By the way, I want to thank Tyler for organizing this
and putting this together for us to do this all week.
It was an undertaking that nobody, we all, a little inside of the business,
we all had, every division had to have a captain.
So Tyler took that lead role.
Tyler, man, thank you, man, for doing this.
And thank you all for bending and getting me on on a Sunday
because it's very, very difficult for me to do it during the week.
No, no, it's no problem at all.
And I appreciate everybody coming on.
Just want to make sure we get some good content out to these deserving fan bases who,
you know, all have some great fans and show some great passion for their team.
So just wanted to make sure we could all come together and get that done.
And of course, I appreciate all of you guys for being flexible.
It's difficult, as all of our listeners probably would know,
it's difficult to get four or five different adults together
to sit down and do something like this at any time,
regardless of what it is you're trying to do.
So just appreciate everybody being flexible
and making it happen for the listenership and these deserving fan bases.
So thanks to you guys as well.
No doubt. So throughout the you guys as well. No doubt.
So throughout the week, what we've done is we've gone over,
we focused on one team and we've asked,
we had a Q and a basically and talked about what the,
what the future holds.
And I guess they saved the worst for last.
It's almost like you ate your dessert first, you know,
warmed up that little, yeah,
you warmed up that little TV dinner. And then the first thing you ate is dessert first you know you warmed up that little yeah you warmed up that
little tv dinner and then the first thing you ate is the brownie now you gotta eat the corn
you know what i'm saying you gotta eat the vegetables now and that's what the jackuars
have been and it's unfortunate and it's you know i'm cracking a joke about it but it's not really
a joke of matter in terms of uh outside 2017, the last eight years,
this fan base hasn't had a lot to really, really look forward to
when it comes to football.
And it got worse when it was just announced that there was a second game
that's going to London.
The Jacks have played a game in London every year for like the last four years,
and now they're going to have two games in London.
And I know there's a lot of speculation as to whether or not that means
the team will eventually move.
It won't.
Nobody's going to London permanently.
It's just that it – I'm going to explain it right now.
It's not fan-related.
It is not because they don't put enough people in the stands.
Because if you look at the statistics, they actually do put – they're probably in the middle of the road
in terms of fans actually buying tickets and going to the game.
This is about Fortune 500 companies not really being in Jacksonville
and sponsoring the Jaguars.
So what happens is every game that they play in London,
they create revenue that looks like two and a half games that they
would play at home. So the two games that they play on the road or in London will equate to maybe
like four and a half, almost five times the revenue that they would get if they played those
two games in Jacksonville. And that revenue is something that they feel that they need
in order until Jacksonville builds up what they're working on right now, which is a Nashville type downtown.
And if you've been to Philadelphia, you've seen Xfinity Live and all of that stuff that's right in the parking lot.
They have some here called the Lot J Project. That's what they're doing.
project that's what they're doing so uh to get the narrative straight this is not because fans don't buy tickets to go to the game and i want that to be very very clear when i talk about this
but i know you guys have seen it and i heard it and probably thought that this means that oh the
city is a viable uh from a fan perspective or support that's not that's not the case. Give me your guys' take on what you thought it meant.
Well, of course, at first you think it's a soft –
the beginning of a soft move over to London,
but obviously a lot of the things you mentioned
and a lot of the statements coming out of the organization would say
that's not the case.
And you're right about the revenue. They get so much more revenue from one game over there
than they do at home. And that's not, you know, hating on anybody from Jacksonville. It's just,
you know, such a big event over there because of the circumstances that that's going to be the
case. You're pulling in everybody from all over Europe that wants to come see an NFL game. So
I don't think it's a bad idea to have one team that maybe plays over there a little bit more to try to keep, you know,
I guess that can't hurt for business for the Jaguars.
Just want to say that, you know, I agree with what you're saying.
I don't think they're moving the team,
but I do think that some of the, I guess some of the fans are,
I understand if some of the fans are upset about that
because that's the last they can see their team.
I do wonder how it's going to hurt free agency
with everything that happened with Tom Coughlin
and all the player grievances.
Now you have to play multiple games and stay over in a different country
with stiffer taxes.
I wonder how that affects free agency.
Although they're maybe not moving to London
and that's the most negative aspect of that narrative,
how do you feel about how it impacts, I guess, like free agency
and the fan base and how they feel?
How is the impact there with this news?
I think it will have an effect.
You've seen players around the league talking about it.
And, you know, they don't like – you like... People think, okay,
it's a free trip to London.
To a millionaire, that doesn't mean anything
because they can go to London whenever they feel like it.
These guys take private planes to Bora Bora.
You know what I'm saying?
They're not worried about
something that would equate to
a $10,000 vacation.
They're more concerned about the money that they're losing
from a tax perspective.
One of the things that Tennessee, Texas, Florida,
state of Washington, one of the things that they do
when they talk about free agency is they tell these guys,
you're going to save 6.5% on – there's no state taxes.
You go to this place, you're going to be paying state taxes.
So the money isn't equal.
And folks will go, that ain't a tremendous amount of money but when you're talking about
a 50 million dollar guarantee that is a tremendous that's you know six and a half percent of 50
million is like 3.25 million so that's a lot of money when you think about guys who have a very short span to make money
and for their future and create generational wealth.
So one of the things that they have as an advantage here
is that they talk about the fact that there's no state taxes
and no weather and all that stuff.
You give that up.
You're giving up 25% of that when you go play somewhere else.
up 25% of that when you go play somewhere else.
And I do know that they've often talked about this with free agents.
Look, you get eight home games with no state taxes,
and then you go to Tennessee and you go to Houston, no state taxes. So that's 10 of your six games where you're not paying state taxes.
Not true when you get those games up to London.
paying state taxes.
Not true when you get those games up to London. To me, it's necessary, and I've grown to understand that.
I think the messaging has been awful because it appears that they're saying
that Jacksonville as a whole, as a city, and the fans and the support
and all of this stuff, it came out as if it's on the fan base, and it's not on the fan base.
They have a tremendous amount of fan support in this city,
and I want to make that clear to everyone.
This is a corporate issue, and Jacksonville has to do a better job
of drawing more corporate people that want to be here in this city
that will buy and pay for sponsorship fees to the Jaguars.
I just think it's money.
I mean, like you guys said, it's a big event when you go over there.
Those guys don't get football regularly.
And the kind of step outside of what the NFL does, football in general,
look at how successful the XFL yesterday was. They generated more money
in one day than the AAF did for, I don't know how many games they had, but football, when done
properly, is going to generate money no matter where it's at because people want to get out with
their family. People want to go out and experience what the Americans experienced
Saturdays and Sundays.
So I don't see any NFL team moving to London across the pond at all.
There's too much involved.
But the amount of money that can be made with those two games
or however much it'll expand to, it's unprecedented.
Yeah, and I did a podcast last week.
That's a great point, by the way.
I did a podcast last week saying that the Jaguars have been bad at football,
but ironically, they actually need to get back to
and put the focus on what they've actually been bad at,
and that's football because in the past,
they've been very, very good at non-football related stuff like selling T-shirts.
Not not that you ain't no doubt about it.
Gardner Minshew. There's a dog park at the stadium here.
They have swimming pools. I don't know if you guys have been here.
There are two swimming pools in the north end zone area. They have cabanas.
They have a party that lasts
three hours after the game for people that buy
those tickets. They have the largest
scoreboards. I don't know if you guys know this.
The scoreboards in both end zones
are actually longer than the football
field itself. It's
unbelievable. They got the largest scoreboards
in the world. There are no
scoreboards that big. They've the largest scoreboards in the world. There are no scoreboard big.
So they've done game day experience type stuff.
And they have a great fan group in the bowl city brigade and the tier street
hooligans, you know, a couple of fan groups here.
So they have tremendous support off the field on the field though.
And this is the issue that I take with the ownership.
I do believe that if they're better on the field,
all of those other things will improve.
Not only will the ticket be a hotter ticket,
but I think you'll get corporate people to jump on,
even if it's not just local people here.
They've been terrible.
They have four winning seasons in 25 years.
I do think if they improve on the field that they'll improve off the field.
That's my take on it.
But on the field right now, man, it's pretty much been a dumpster fire,
and the fans are already pissed off because they didn't make a whole bunch of changes.
The fans wanted to rip this thing apart and just start over with somebody fresh,
the way Carolina did with Matt Rule.
They didn't do that here.
They kept Doug Marone. They kept Dave Caldwell as the GM the only
thing that they did was get rid of Tom
Coughlin who was
a bit of a tyrant and a bit of an old school
guy who didn't really understand the way things work
you know in today's NFL
so
not a lot of change not a lot of change
so when I hear
like last year I heard people complaining about Mike Vrabel,
and this year I hear people complaining about Bill O'Brien.
I'm like, man, please, those are not big problems
compared to what we have here in Jacksonville.
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What would you be changing then on the field you talk about on the field and i agree with you if you get things right on the
field everything else always seems uh be in place like you said throughout the crossover winning
kind of cures everything so what what changes do you want to see made on the field uh maybe from
even if it's coaches or a personnel standpoint, what kind of changes are you looking for them to make
to turn things around pretty quickly?
Well, first of all, we have to figure out what Jaguar football is.
We know what Titan football is.
We're somehow with the identity of Deshaun Watson figuring out
what Texans football is.
But when you think about football in other places,
the Patriot way,
you know, the Giants have
always been built on defensive line play
regardless of who, or pass
rush, regardless of who the coach was
and his fans over decades. You think about
Green Bay. You think about those
places that have Baltimore.
Every Baltimore team,
am I lying when I tell you that every single
Baltimore or Pittsburgh team over there
they almost personify the city and personify who they are as a city now Gardner Minshew may
be the guy that has a lot to do with that move, but I don't want to anoint him.
But there has to be an identity with what Jaguar football is.
This team had a record.
This is a record, by the way.
They had five top five picks in a row.
I'm going to name them for you. Luke Jokal was the first guy in 2000, I believe 2013, out of the league.
Dante Fowler,
he's no longer a Jaguar. They got like a third
round pick for him when they traded him to
Los Angeles.
Blake Boros,
no longer with the team, and
is nothing more than a career
backup. Jalen Ramsey,
no longer with the team, even though the
team got two first round picks, the third and fourth four. Leonardalen Ramsey, no longer with the team, even though the team got two first-round picks, the third and
fourth for him. Leonard Fournette,
whose future is in
doubt with the team, maybe even this year,
because recently he took all Jaguars
related stuff off of his Instagram,
but they're not going to exercise his fifth-year
options, and most people think after,
if they keep him this year, they'll move on after this year,
even though he's played pretty well.
That's five in a row that they've had.
Name another team that has done that and has been successful,
yet still the GM that made those picks is still here.
Can't really name it.
You can't.
You can't.
I mean, it is what it is.
They're drafting quality guys when you mentioned Dante Fowler,
but they're not retaining them.
You may draft guys that you may be high on,
but they don't pan out to be as good as you would have wanted.
That's a problem for the Jacksonville Jaguars,
and I think I hate to call it a controversy because I don't think it's
controversial,
but the decision on who you rock with next season at quarterback is one that you just really –
I don't want that to come down to training camp, who outplays the other one in training camp.
That needs to be a definitive decision before the preseason starts.
And I think – and correct me if I'm wrong, Wig, I think you go with going to miss you.
Well, that's a very good point.
And it is the first thing that's going to have to be addressed.
Some people believe that there will be teams that will make a play for Nick Foles in the offseason,
that there'll be teams that'll make a play for him,
even if the Jaguars have to actually give up.
It's sort of Brock Osweiler type of deal.
They have to give up something.
The team has basically said it's going to be a competition,
but when you look at everything around it,
you don't feel like it's going to be much of a competition.
Gardner mentioned he had a very big presence down with the Super Bowl.
They hired Jay Gruden as the offensive coordinator.
Jay loves guys like that.
You know, think about Andy Dalton.
You think about Colt McCoy.
You think about the type of quarterbacks that he's had in Washington.
You don't come into this league as a rookie,
whether you're a first or a sixth-round pick, and go five and six, basically.
It's what Garner did. He went five and six
and he won
rookie of the week like seven or
eight times but for some
reason didn't win rookie of the year
offensively.
He's a good player.
I don't know that he's a
franchise quarterback.
I don't know that he's a franchise quarterback. I don't know that he's a franchise quarterback.
I think it's too early to say that,
but he's a very, very good player at a position where all you need,
you look at Jimmy Garoppolo,
all you need is a guy that's competent and is a good player
and doesn't make a lot of mistakes.
The thing about him, he's a gamer.
He's a clutch.
And he does personify with this city.
People here love him.
With Nick Foles, I think the thing is you can't discount a guy
that won the Super Bowl MVP,
but this team isn't really built up like the Eagles were.
The Eagles had a great offensive line, and he was really, really in tune,
and he got hot, and he was really, really in tune with the coaching staff
because of his relationship with them. we don't have that here.
You know, so they made it very clear that Gardner was the best player
for the way that this team is constructed because they couldn't block people.
And Gardner has a getaway car.
He can escape, he can scramble, and he can make those plays.
So moving forward, you're right.
I think even if they say it's a competition,
we'll see if someone comes up to them during the draft
or during free agency that gets hungry for a quarterback.
Now, you made a good point, and I'll say this.
If it actually does come down to who looks better in training camp,
then Nick Foles is going to be the starter
because I was there last year every single practice.
Nick Foles looked head and shoulders above Gardner Minshew in practice.
Gardner's not that type of guy that's going to really impress you
in a practice setting.
He's going to impress you more in games.
But, Tony, let me ask you this.
I mean, you said that Nick foe nick foes looked really really
good in in training camp but it's kind of hard to judge him off of the one season off his first
season in jacksonville just due to the just due to the fact that in the very first game of the
season what was it the very first drive he he got hurt in missed majority, if not all of the season.
I believe he only played, what, three games after he came back from that devastating injury.
So moving forward, would you like to see the Jacksonville Jaguars give Nick Foles at least one more chance,
knowing that because he got hurt in the very first game in the
fourth in the first quarter you truly could not say you saw the best of Nick Foles or do you just
want them to move on with with Garner well I've been hesitant to say what I want them to do
because it it tears at you when you say what I want them to do. I try not to root for the team, and I try to be very honest,
and I try to be really, really subjective when it comes to it.
But here's what happened, to recap exactly what you said.
It wasn't the first drive, but it was the first quarter,
the first game against the Chiefs, and it was Chris Jones.
Chris Jones drove him into the ground on, the first game against the Chiefs. And it was Chris Jones. Chris Jones drove him
into the ground on a
play that was actually a touchdown pass. He
threw a 47-yard touchdown
to D.J. Chark that
really, really dropped into Chark's
belly in the first quarter against the Chiefs
and he was driven into the ground and he
fractured his clavicle. So
in the press box
there was a collective what in the hell?
Because most people felt like our season's over.
Because Gardner looked like trash in the preseason.
All of a sudden, this kid comes in, and so the first couple of games,
you're like, okay, people just aren't ready for him.
They didn't game plan for him.
That's why he's having a success.
And he had a couple of bad games, and then people were like,
we can't wait until Foles comes back.
As soon as Nick Foles was healthy, they inserted him back into the lineup.
The first chance that they got after the bye.
And that was based on the fact that they had given him $50 million in guarantees.
It was based on the fact that in the preseason, it was lights out.
In practice, we used to go, wow, when we watched him throw.
And the reason why is most people believe it was because we watched Blake Bortles
basically throw balls that looked like somebody punted them for five years.
And then you get a guy in here throwing spirals who had just won a Super Bowl,
and you're like, wow.
So we're all retrospectively looking at that and saying,
was he really that great or was he just so much better than Blake
and so much better than what we were used to?
We overvalued it.
So Foles comes back, and when he comes back,
the offensive line is so bad and so poor that he looked awful.
He looked terrible, man.
They lost a couple of games.
They had three turnovers in the first quarter in a game,
and then Gardner Minshew comes into the game
and he rallies the team.
He gets them within a score.
So I think what has happened with Foles is
it may be something that went on
and the circumstances that you described were right
and what I've just laid out was right
and it was unfair.
But he's kind of lost the team, man.
To me, he's lost the team.
He's lost the locker room.
He was giving speeches about – he was talking like a politician
who has four years to get this right.
And where he missed it in his messaging is you don't have that long.
You have to play like your hair's on fire.
You have to really come out here and do something for this team
because this fan base doesn't have four years.
They don't want to hear anything about the future.
They don't want to hear anything about changing the culture.
They want instant results, and that's what Gardner gave them last year
because they've had this hangover.
They've had four winning seasons in 25 years.
So the last thing you want is some dude standing up on a podium saying,
it's not that bad.
I got a beautiful wife and a family at home and I'll go home
and hug and kiss my wife.
They don't want to hear that crap.
You know what they want to hear?
No, they want to hear we're going to fix this.
We're going to get something done.
We're going to do it now. And Gardner Minshew came in as a guy who no one thought could do anything.
He was a six-round pick.
He went to four colleges, by the way.
He almost didn't even play for Washington State.
He was going to be a grad assistant slash coach at Alabama
when he left Coastal Carolina or wherever the hell he was.
He was bouncing around from place to place.
This kid came in here and captivated the hearts of the city and said,
screw that.
We're going to do it now.
We're going to do it today.
And I mind you now, he won the last game of the season.
The Jaguars could have been picking fourth or fifth in the draft.
He went and won the game and they're picking ninth because that's who he is.
And that's what he is
and people were like we're cool with that so i don't know if if if nick foals could ever get
this city back if he does he has to change his messaging i understand what he was trying to do
i'm trying to say but he has to understand where he is you know what i'm saying like a preacher in
houston in the fifth ward doesn't preach the same way a preacher even though they have the same message doesn't preach as the same as a guy
in South Dakota it's different than the fifth ward you know what I'm talking about Cody you got to
talk to those people and I think that that's the message that got lost with Nick Foles and I don't
know if at this point he can get it back I absolutely don't think he can get it back because one thing football fans,
one thing we love as fans or in the organization, we love electricity.
We love the light being flicked on.
We love excitement.
We love somebody that can galvanize a white guy, a black guy,
and Hispanic all together on Sundays
and say, well, you know what?
I believe in a guy.
Nick Foles does not have that.
Not here in Jacksonville.
Maybe in Philly, yeah, because you pulled out the Philly special
and brought Philly to the first Super Bowl in how long?
And then you beat the team that initially beat you years back
when you had McNabb and T.O.
So, yeah, you were a staple for Philly until Carson Wentz came back.
But there's a reason why when Carson Wentz came back,
you were where you were.
And now, yes, he's going to look much better in preseason.
Yes, he's going to give you the prototypical professional answers
when you ask him questions about the future and what it holds,
but starting to miss you just does something that Nick Foles doesn't do,
and people will get caught up in that.
I'm caught up in it because now I believe he should be the starter
going into the next season.
Like you said it, you guys went from one pick to another pick
just because he does not want to lose and that's very
important another important thing is what are you going to do with Leonard Fournette and his future
with the Jacksonville Jaguars because I believe he's been under underwhelming since his arrival
in the league all right so with Leonard the dude had like 80 receptions last year. I think he had like 1,200, 1,300 yards.
He had a 190-yard game or a 200-yard game.
He's rushed for over 1,000 yards two of his first three years.
If you look back at Derrick Henry, and I love Derrick Henry.
He's actually a distant cousin to my wife.
He's in the other room.
And he's from a place called Yulee.
It's 25 miles north of where I'm sitting right now here in Jacksonville.
Yulee's out.
Yeah, I love Derrick Henry.
The thing is, if you look at Derrick Henry's first two seasons,
Leonard Fournette's rookie year, he rushed for more yards in that one year
than Derrick Henry did those first two.
So I think what happened with
Leonard is, Leonard
the expectations
was that he was going to be, it's almost
equivalent to Hershel Walker. He had a better
college career than he did as an NFL player.
And Hershel Walker's career in the NFL wasn't bad.
It's just that Hershel
Walker is like the greatest college
football player ever to most
people, at least for people that's from the South.
And he didn't really live up to it in the NFL.
I think the expectation level is the same with Leonard Fournette.
We got to remember, I just said the offensive line was terrible.
So if the offensive line is terrible and this dude still rushes for 1,200 yards
and catches 80 balls.
Do we make the connect that if he's in a different situation with a better quarterback, with a better offensive line,
what the hell would he do if he had all of that stuff working out
and more stability in the franchise?
I think when people watch him, they get mad because he's not Christian McCaffrey
and he doesn't make people miss.
You got to make nobody miss.
The dude is 225 pounds and for the first two years of his career
was playing against stacked boxes because nobody believed that Blake Bortles
could throw a rock in the ocean.
Last year when they started to have a little bit of success,
he actually did play better.
Leonard Fournette isn't a bust by
regular
NFL standards. He's just a bust
because he was the fourth overall
pick. This organization
needed
they thought
they did not need a quarterback and
they passed up Patrick Mahomes and they passed
up Deshaun Watson to take Leonard Fournette
and the fans around here will not let them forget that that happened.
And I try to remind people daily, 49ers made the Super Bowl this year.
You know what they did?
They took Solomon Thomas.
They also passed up Patrick Mahomes.
Yeah, and they also passed up Patrick Mahomes.
And, in fact, in that draft, the 49ers took Solomon Thomas
and then with their second first round pick in the book that
they got because they were able to maneuver because the they they were the ones that traded
the pick to the Bears when the Bears took Trubisky they took the foster the linebacker from Alabama
he ain't there no more either so they totally whiffed on that first round draft in 2017 and
they still ended up in the Superbowl this year.
And they lost to a quarterback.
That's an MVP Superbowl MVP that they passed up.
They took Solomon Thomas and did not take Patrick Mahomes.
They did not at that time have Jimmy Garoppolo.
So nobody gives them grief about that.
But the Jaguars are going to give Leonard Fournette and the Jaguar fans are
going to get Fournette and they're going to give the organization grief about Leonard Fournette because they did not take Patrick Holmes and they did not take Deshaun Watson because they were in bed and were in love with Blake Borders or the thought that Borders could turn out to be something that we all know that he couldn't be.
So that's the thing, man.
It's like Fournette hasn't been as bad as people think.
And if he is the free agent market and goes to a winning team, people are going to be sorry.
the quarterback position and you mentioned Leonard Fournette and what he might be able to do with a better cast around him how do they improve this cast on offense going forward what do you want
to see them you want to see them spend big money in free agency on wide receivers or a tight end or
would you like to see them attack that in the draft or both how do you think they improve that
cast around Minshew or because I think Minshew should be the guy as well. He's got magic about him that they got to utilize.
So how do you kind of support that, you know,
Leonard Fournette-Garner-Minshew duo through free agency in the draft?
How do you see them attacking?
That's a great question.
And it's one that I ask Dave Caldwell, who I talk to regularly.
Yes, inside information.
Yeah, people pretty much assume that they have one year to get this right
because Dave Caldwell and Doug Marone were almost –
most people thought that they wouldn't be retained
and part of the angst of the fan base as they were,
and they're blaming everything on Tom Coughlin, sort of,
as he was pushed out.
So here's the thing.
I asked Dave Caldwell, do you do what's right for the franchise?
The way the Texans did when they drafted Jeffrey Simmons,
even though he was hurt, but long-term they knew it would be great.
Do you do what's right by the franchise,
or do you do what helps you keep your job?
That means do you go out and get guys that will help you win right now
because they'll give you an extension?
Or do you do the right thing infrastructure-wise for the franchise?
Dave told me that's going to be on him, not Doug.
He said, I'll have to make those choices.
I'll have to make those decisions.
So if you make those decisions, what you'll do is you ask, where's the beef?
They couldn't stop the run last year.
I think they're targeting Derrick Brown or Javon Kinlaw, the big defensive tackles out of the beef. They couldn't stop the run last year. I think they're targeting Derrick Brown or Javon Kinlaw,
the big defensive tackles,
out of the SEC. I think with
their second first round pick, they need
to be looking at a left tackle and
try to move Cam Robinson in the guard
because he hasn't really, really played well.
They've got to improve the line.
They may do it in free agency with Brandon
Scherf now that they've hired Jake Gruden,
Brandon Scherf. If the Redsk hired Jake Gruden, Brandon Scherf,
if the Redskins let him become a free agent,
maybe they sign him and make him a right guard.
They really have to improve inside out.
They got to get stronger on both lines of scrimmage.
And then add to the guys that they have. The one thing that they had is a dynamic tight end.
I told Tom Coughlin four years ago he should have drafted George Kittle at a charity
event. He looked at me and walked away.
George Kittle's the best tight end in the NFL.
They didn't do it.
The thing is, this team has tried
to get a tight end. The tight end is
a buddy. He's the buddy of a quarterback,
especially a young quarterback.
They got to show up the tight end,
show up the infrastructure on this team. It's not going
to look sexy because right now they've had the worst offseason
PR-wise that I can remember this franchise ever having.
So to think that you're going to go in the free agency in the draft
and all you're going to do is address unsexy positions
doesn't really help your situation.
But to me, that's exactly what they have to do.
D.J. Chark played in the Pro Bowl and caught a touchdown.
Oh, Chark.
He got out of this game. Yeah. From Ryan Tannehill. From Ryan Tannehill. Yeah. do. DJ Chark played in the Pro Bowl and caught a touchdown. Oh, Chark.
From Ryan Tannehill.
From Ryan Tannehill.
He did. So they got an alpha wide receiver. They have to
really focus on the infrastructure in this team
and start replaying. They got extra
picks because of the Jalen Ramsey deal.
That's what they got to do, man. But they also
have to have the discipline to answer your question
to do what's right for the infrastructure and the future of the franchise
and not do the sexy thing that wins the press conferences
and saves you a job and gets your contract extension.
Yeah, I think that's a pretty good assessment of where they need to go from here.
So if they're able to do those things and I guess kind of round us out
for today's edition of the crossover event, from here. So if they're able to do those things and I guess kind of round us out for,
you know, today's edition of the crossover event,
what's your prediction for this team going forward into 2020?
Do you see them bouncing back?
What do you think is going to happen?
It's hard for me to say bounce back because their back has always been the wrong side of everything for winning seasons in 25 years.
What I think is they'll play with pride.
They'll have individual performers that are really, really well.
I hate to be negative,
but I don't think it's going to be a winning season for Jacksonville
when you think about the division.
If the Colts had a quarterback,
and the way Deshaun Watson has played in Houston and and
the way Tennessee looks and they'll be able to retain some people the first thing they have to
do is win the division and I think that's an uphill battle at this point um that I don't think
they have a chance to win the division you can't win the division you can't make the playoffs so
that being said I think it's going to be another down season for Jacksonville.
It's going to be a situation where maybe in the offseason, there'll wholesale changes
everywhere, and they'll be looking to reboot the franchise.
I will say this before we kind of get out of here.
The tools and talent, there's talent in Jacksonville.
I like DJ Chalk, and I think with a more consistent quarterback over
the course of 16 games, he can be what Allen Robinson was, or he can be like those years
where you had two good receivers that are no longer there. That's what Chalk can be,
and I like what Fournette can do. I would never see him as a top five pure running back.
He may have a top five season,
but I don't think he's going to be a top five running back.
But if you can fix that offensive line
and really get some good inside linemen,
get some guards in there that can do what they need to do for him,
then we can see more consistent play.
My biggest issue with Fournette is as big as he is, as strong as he is,
what was it, three touchdowns last season?
Yeah.
It was very, very low.
And I don't like –
Yeah, the team was awful in the red zone.
He's good inside the five-yard line.
It's just the team was awful in the red zone.
And to your point, Cody, and you'll know this straight up,
they traded a fifth-round pick for Carlos Hyde at the trade deadline last year,
and then Carlos Hyde got here and looked like a bum.
Carlos Hyde went to Houston and had a very good year to the point where even
John said, hey, we need to make him a part of it.
We need to re-sign Carlos Hyde.
That tells you right there that if a guy like Fournette can get 1,200,
1,300 yards and catch 80 balls for Jacksonville behind this line,
what can he do in a different situation?
So I think Leonard Fournette is a very, very good player.
I just think that he's been put in a – he'll never –
it's almost like we were talking about with you, Tyler,
about the receiver Davis.
You'll never get over the fact that he was a top five pick.
He'll never get over – he'll never live that –
and he'll never get over the fact that he was picked with Watson
and Mahomes on the board.
That'll never end for him.
But when you really, really look at him,
he's not been that bad of a football player.
He's had 2,000-yard seasons in three years,
and the one year that he didn't, he tore his hamstring in the first game
and he missed like seven weeks.
So, that's Leonard Fournette.
I mean, he's a real football player.
All right, so this was the Jacksonville Jaguars edition
of the Ultimate Crossover, the AFC South ultimate crossover.
Cody Davis, Tyler Rowland, and my man John Hickman,
also in Houston with Cody Davis.
It's been fun.
We talk to these guys twice a year during the season,
so you're very, very familiar with them.
And hopefully you guys enjoyed it.
This is Tony Wiggins with Locked on Jaguars.