Jacksonville Jaguars: It's Just a Preseason Game, but There are Major Concerns

Sometimes, the best thing for a columnist to do before he writes about something he feels passionate about is stop, look and listen. That is exactly what I did over the last 24 hours concerning the Jaguars' 47-12 loss to the New England Patriots.

While there was discussion and excuses and a basically a free pass and apology for the lopsided loss to a preseason Super Bowl favorite, the fact remains the product on the field, whether first-, second- or third-stringers, could not compete with a team that dominated the young Jacksonville team while playing with half its starters out.

The reason why I write this and the tone with which it is being typed is one of concern and confusion. For a team that spent a lot of money over the offseason to remake the itself into a playoff contender, it did not look like that on the television screen Thursday night.

And this cannot be blamed on a rookie quarterback, Blaine Gabbert, who was making the first start of his career.

Jaguars head coach Jack Del Rio said in the Florida Times-Union his team stuck to a game plan, and the score may have not been what the staff or the fans wanted to see, but he was looking at players to evaluate for the team's future.

The 47 points are the most Jacksonville has ever given up in a preseason game. Granted, they did not play with defensive starters like defensive end Aaron Kampman or defensive back Derek Cox, or offensive weapons quarterback David Garrard, running back Maurice Jones-Drew or tight end Marcedes Lewis, but I expected more than what I saw.

So did the fans, according to what you heard of talk radio Friday. Callers wanted to know why the team looked as uncomfortable as it did. To have the Patriots' third-string quarterback—who happened to be a first-round talent and possibly the best quarterback in the draft—light the Jaguars up for four scores in the first four possessions of the second half really left a bitter taste in many fans' mouths.

Jacksonville and its coaching staff is under pressure to perform and better than that, succeed. They are under a microscope to make the playoffs and not falter in the final month of the season, which has been their MO for the past two seasons.

Head coach Jack Del Rio has been given an ultimatum by owner Wayne Weaver to win and make the playoffs or the team will have another coach in 2012. It was softened somewhat a few weeks ago when Weaver said the team would evaluate Del Rio's performance at the end of the year. And with that ultimatum, even with the spending on defense and new starters being brought in by general manager Gene Smith, it is apparent that he might be on the hot seat as well.

Sports talk radio was abuzz about the team’s performance, some questioning why the Patriots, who have had the same amount of time to prepare and have the same number of players to work with, were so much better than the Jaguars. And some announcers even questioned the drafting ability of Smith and the scouts on the payroll.

To some extent, I agree with them. This is a year where everything must fall into place. Smith and his staff needed to hit home runs with every draft pick. Gabbert was the prize and we traded a second-round pick to get him. But when you look at the smaller school draft again by Smith (with the exception of Gabbert), it leaves me and others scratching our heads.

The draft isn't the only thing that fans are dealing with. They also have to decide whether the product on the field will be worth coming out for after the league just went through a lockout that has lingering effects like a hangover.

Another issue is ticket sales. Last year, the team sold out its season tickets for all 10 games. This year the team is not so lucky and like other teams, they face blackouts. And the team on the field the other night may not have helped fans who were on the fence trying to decide if they wanted to attend games or even buy tickets for the season.

As one radio personality stated Friday night, he understood media outlets in town are supposed to promote the team and get fans to go to games, but with that performance, how can you ask someone to do that?

There appears to be this cloud over this team, almost like there are two expansion teams. There is the one coached originally by Tom Coughlin, who took the team to the AFC Championship twice. And then there is the team coached by Del Rio, who has struggled and is barely above .500 as one of the longest tenured coaches in the NFL.

Coughlin was a general and a dictator who got the most out of his players by intimidation and hard training. Del Rio is the antithesis of that—a player’s coach who uses his experience in the NFL to help mold his team.

Both work if used properly. But Coughlin was the more successful of the two and Jaguars fans were spoiled and still are to some extent that this team does not have more playoff experience under Del Rio and the staff he has put together over the years.

This season, the team set out to make the defense better and add players it thought would fill the gaps that were exposed last season. This included a quarterback of the future, Gabbert, who played better than anyone on Thursday night. Gabbert’s receivers let him down a few times with missed reads and dropped passes and the only position that needed help in the offseason that the team had not addressed yet is at wide receiver.

And, just so it is clear, the players the Jaguars signed in free agency offer great potential, but there is no guarantee they will play with the current unit and with each other and jell. They are just pieces to a puzzle right now. How they fit is yet to be determined. Yes, it is the first game of the preseason, but the product of the Patriots, with second- and third-string players walking all over the team's backups, speaks volumes about what needs to be accomplished.

The second preseason game of the season is Friday night at home. If the starters and reserves who were kept out of the game Thursday night are on the field and are still losing by double digits or being blown out, then the Jaguars have some things to really fix.

And then, the fans, the coaching staff and the team management can begin to worry.