Veteran Leaders, Urban Meyer Upbeat About Jaguars' Early Chemistry
When Shad Khan hired Urban Meyer in January to lift the Jacksonville Jaguars up from a 1-15 record and the NFL's cellar, the hope was that he would quickly be able to set a culture and vision, providing sight for a team that had previously walked blind.
The fruits of the endeavor to flip the Jaguars' losing culture on its head won't be known until the Jaguars actually hit the gridiron, but the Jaguars' newest regime has been able to at least start building the foundation. A foundation that, so far, has been built around comradery and chemistry on and off the practice field.
Thursday saw the Jaguars have perfect attendance at their voluntary Phase Three organized team activity, which resulted in the Dream Finders Homes Practice Complex being filled with the chirps of competition and intensity throughout the practice.
"I look at—if you said in January, ‘What would be your ideal vision of what the team will look like in May?’—and I’m not talking about execution, I’m just talking about comradery, ownership, work ethic, sports performance, changing bodies, health of players, I’d grade it an A-plus," Meyer said following Thursday's practice.
"I can’t be more happy with it. Everybody talks about the draft and free agency, I’m not going to let people forget, there’s a great core group of players in the Jaguars organization that want to win and it’s our job as coaches to give them an opportunity to win. So, they’re all here, they all enjoy being around each other, they enjoy being around the staff and it’s been really good.”
While there were no OTAs last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Thursday's practice could be compared in part to early training camp practices from 2020. The energy on the field between the two is incomparable, with the Jaguars' 2021 voluntary practices getting the nod over some of the team's most important practices from a year ago.
Whether that will result in wins is anyone's guess. Football games aren't won due to animated and lively practices in May, though perfect attendance and a pedal to the metal performance certainly doesn't hurt.
"It’s a lot of energy just around the entire building right now. We have a lot of guys and that’s something that’s kind of different than what I’ve been used to in the past. We have a lot of guys so we can really get some good-on-good reps," Jaguars safety Rayshawn Jenkins said Saturday.
"You can just feel the energy. You can just feel the amount of guys that are out there. And everybody [is] fairly new to one another, so of course there’s going to be some energy there and guys trying to get to know one another and things like that.”
Jenkins is one of the numerous veterans Meyer and general manager Trent Baalke have brought in to help instill the franchise's new-look culture and principles. Each of them will be asked to play a key role not only on the field, but off it as well.
But few veterans the Jaguars added this offseason came with as great of a reputation as a leader than Marvin Jones, who was the team's oldest played at 31-years-old before the Jaguars signed 33-year-old Tim Tebow. Jones has a unique veteran perspective compared to his counterparts and has played on his fair share of winning teams at the NFL level, something most of the Jaguars' young core can't say.
"I think in a lot of teams there’s a lot of cohesion. All the teams that I’ve been with or a part of, we’ve had cohesion, so I think this is no different," Jones said on Saturday. "I think it brings a different element just because, like we said, all of the energy that it brings, we’re always together on that field and moving at 100 miles per hour, so you get to experience that with each other.
"That comes with great responsibility because when everything’s going fast, we need to rely on your brothers because if somebody misses the call or somebody’s over here, you have to pull them in the right direction. So, everybody’s always communicating, and I think when you have that, that chaos is great because the communication has to go up. So, that’s one thing that I like about the energy and the cohesion we have. It’s been a short time, but obviously all of the individual groups have been together for some time now, so we have cohesion there and it transferred nicely into the team, into all of the groups.”
The Jaguars have a few more months until they finally take the field. Until then, all they can do is continue to come together and develop their chemistry. The early returns have been there; now is the time for the Jaguars to learn to maintain.
