After winning the season opener at home against the Titans, the 1-0 Jacksonville Jaguars will head to New York this Sunday to play the 1-0 Jets. This is a very important game for both teams with huge positive or negative implications. Let’s look at several different factors for both teams heading in to this game.

the Jaguars offense Vs the Jets defense: The Jaguars plan on attacking the Jets with their strong running game led by Maurice Jones-Drew. This will be successful, but only to a certain extant. The Jags can not afford to be a one dimensional offense in this game but frankly, they have no choice. Luke McCown will struggle in this game due to the corner back tandem in Antonio Cromartie and Darrelle Revis, arguably the leagues best duo. The Jaguars have no answer at wide receiver for those two, so there only real chance is to run the ball and pass to Mercedes Lewis. Either the Jaguars receiving corp will have to step up big time or MJD will have to have a monster game for the Jags to have a chance of putting up enough points to win this game. The advantage goes to the Jets defense as they will hassle McCown all day and the Jags will be forced to become a one dimensional run first offense throughout this contest.
Jets offense Vs the Jags defense: Now, this one is a lot closer than many people think. Whether or not you believe it, the Jaguars have significantly improved their defense in this past off season and possibly have one of the best run defenses in the NFL. The combination of Ladanian Tomlinson and Shonn Greene pose no threat, which will force the Jets to pass the ball. The pass attack from the Jets is Jacksonville’s real problem as Mathis and Cox (if he plays) do not match up well with Plaxico Burress and Santonio Holmes. The Jaguars linebackers and Dawan Landry will be the game changers and will keep this defense in contention for all sixty minutes.  Overall, i feel the advantage goes to Jacksonville. The Jets have never been known for their offense and I feel that the Jaguars will shut down the run and have enough composure to maintain the Jets receivers to  non game changing performances.

Special Teams: The advantage goes to Jacksonville as they have two players who have gone to the pro bowl for special teams and a very dangerous return man in Deji Karim. Plus, they have a very powerful, reliable, and accurate kicker in Josh Scobee

What to look for: Maurice Jones-drew will have over a hundred yards rushing and a pair of touchdowns. The team needs him to step up and that’s exactly what he does best. LT and Greene will each have under 50 yards rushing. Burress and Holmes will both have big games with a touchdown for each of them. McCown will struggle as he is playing a very good Jets defense with very little starting experience.

I feel this will be a very close game through all 60 minutes and even though I will be rooting for the Jaguars, the Jets will win 20 to 17. The Jaguars are a rising team but just are not ready yet to take down any strongly entrenched teams such as the New York Jets.

The Jacksonville Jaguars ended their 2011 preseason against the Rams with a 24 to 17 loss, making them 1-3 for this year. Much like every other preseason game, the Jaguars showed some positives and negatives, but left me and many other fans with more questions than answers.

I want to first talk about the negatives of this preseason finale and I think the most important one is David Garrard. Since missing the first preseason game and starting the final three, David Garrard has looked lethargic, inaccurate, afraid, and down right awful. His passes have been over, under, and anywhere the intended receiver is not. Somehow and some way through this off season Garrard’s skills have regressed and he has become a huge liability for this team to win games in the regular season or go anywhere near a playoff berth. Gabbert has outplayed Garrard through this off season and now is the time to start the future of the Jacksonville Jaguars. Cut or trade Garrard and save $7.975 million, but most importantly it will save this team and city from another season of David Garrard inconsistency and mediocrity.

Another negative that I spoke about in a previous article that is still prevalent is the lack of depth on this Jaguar’s football team. The second and third stringers have played downright awful in just about every single position other than quarterback and running back. Most noticeably bad is the back up safeties and corners. They have made the likes of Thaddeus Lewis and Brian Hoyer look like pro bowl quarterbacks throughout this entire preseason.  Depth is a huge concern for this team in just about every single position and hopefully these backups will step up and help this team this season.

Now to lighten the mood a bit. Through Jacksonville’s troubles this preseason and against the Rams there have been many positives to give us Jaguar fans some hope for this season. Blaine Gabbert has shown an unbelievable amount of potential and has me and almost every single fan excited to see what this young man will do for this franchise. Rashean Mathis played great against the Rams and has bounced back to his old form now that he is completely injury free. Although the Jaguars did not get many sacks through these last 4 games, the entire Defensive line has played with passion and have caused pressure on opposing quarterbacks and running backs. The addition of Aaron Kampan and Alualu will only make this line stronger and more efficient. The free agent acquisitions have shown that the run defense and pass defense have been significantly improved. All in all the entire starting defense has played extremely well though these 4 games, bringing back some pride and hope for us Jag’s fans. Other noticeable positive contributors are Dujaun Harris, Austen Lane, Cecil Shorts, Luke Mccown, Mike Thomas, Paul Posluszny, Dawan Landry, Deji Karim, Nate Collins, and Matt Roth.

To be honest, the Jaguars were nothing short of disappointing through these four preseason games. Many questions with no answers were raised as a result of their terrible play. Gene Smith and Jack Del Rio are asking fans to not panic and are promising us better play in the regular season. I have seen many good things about this team and I have faith in the players, coaches, and management so I have no problem giving them the benefit of the doubt. I look forward to the September 11th game against the Titans and hopefully writing a recap about a home team victory. Go Jags!

Herm Edwards, Roddy White, and ESPN, this one is directed towards you. Before you tweet that Gabbert will never have the successful career that Mallet will have or go on a nationally televised network to talk about how much of a better game Mallet had and how that translates in to who will be the better quarterback in this league, let’s look at the facts.

Ryan Mallet was a 3rd round pick, and for good reason. He had and still has major character concerns when coming out of college and that’s not all. Several times throughout his last year at Arkansas he cracked under any kind of pressure and showed extremely poor leadership skills when his team needed him the most. Those are two very negative traits that don’t just disappear after one single game of capitalizing on poor defensive play. Blaine Gabbert on the other hand was the tenth overall pick and for him that was considered a fall in the draft. Throughout his college career he constantly showed the skills that any GM desires to bring to their team. Such as strong leadership, an arm that isn’t determined purely on strength or just heaving it down field, and clutch performances when his team put it all on his shoulders.

Now on to the preseason game and what Mr. Herm edwards and Roddy White would like us to believe is proof of Mallet’s soon to be career dominance compared to Gabbert’s.

Gabbert went 9 for 16 with 85 yards passing compared to Mallet’s 12 for 19 with 164 yards passing and one touchdown. At first glance you would seem understand this Gabbert vs Mallet controversy that ESPN has stirred up, but what they fail to mention to the viewers (surprisingly) is that  Gabbert came in to the game as the #1 starting quarterback, playing against a very good starting Patriot’s defense with two missing offensive lineman and a rookie starting at LG. Oh, not to mention no Maurice Jones-drew. While Mallet spent his time in the game as the second QB to come in behind Brian Hoyer, against Jacksonville’s second, third, and fourth stringers on defense with most of them being undrafted free agents or rookies. If you watch film of the game it is extremely obvious that while Mallet does have potential to make it in this league, all of his completions and touchdowns were completed purely off of the Jaguar’s terrible depth on defense and them blowing coverages. While Gabbert threaded the needle on one great pass and threw several other that were completed against a starting defense. For anyone who watched the game and knows anything about football will tell you that it is completely idiotic and down right ridiculous to state that a third round pick is all of a sudden better and has a brighter future than the tenth overall pick after just one single preseason game when their competition was not even close to being comparable.

So Mr. White and ESPN analysts, how about showing both sides of an argument instead of just clearly being biased towards one side and spewing that out to your viewers and Twitter followers. Blaine Gabbert is and will be a much better quarterback in this league than Ryan Mallet will ever be.

Despite what the “experts” over at ESPN would like us to believe, the Jaguars actually looked surprisingly good. I watched the game from start to end just like most of my fellow Jaguar fans and I noticed a completely revamped defense and a QB with a very bright future with this team. I also noticed one large glaring weakness.

This new defense that GM Gene has assembled looks the part of a completely improved, from top to bottom defense, than the horrendous defense that myself and other Jags fans had to witness last year. Clint Session hits like a ton of bricks, and it was very obvious against the Patriots that he has the anger and passion that this Defense has been missing since we let Mike Peterson walk in free agency. Paul Posluszny blew a few coverage assignments, but that is something that we can expect to see this preseason from the new players because of the shortened off-season. His positives were that he shows good burst and speed to get to the outside and has the potential to improve the Jaguar’s run defense tremendously. I quickly noticed Dawan Landry in the back secondary directing traffic with leadership and poise that Jacksonville clearly lacked last year. He also finished with a fumble recovery. Other bright spots on the defense for the Jaguars was Tyson Alualu, Rashean Mathis, Austen Lane, and Larry Hart seemed to help himself with his ability to get very close to the QB on several different occasions.

As we all know Blaine Gabbert had his first NFL start for the Jaguars last night. I for one, was extremely impressed with how well he carried himself on the field and a couple of throws that he completed that made me very happy for this young man’s future with Jacksonville. He did make some mistakes that one can expect from a rookie that is only a couple of months removed from a spread offense with no off-season under his belt. He is not ready at this time or possibly anytime this year to unseat David Garrard as the starter but I am still very excited to see Blaine Gabbert develop in to the quarterback that I know he will become. Other offensive players that shined were Rashad Jennings with his quick burst, power, and his ability to pull off several impressive cutbacks, Jason Hill with his speed and ability to get separation, and Eugene Monroe who seemed to dominate the entire time he was in with the exception of only one play.

One huge glaring weakness on this Jacksonville team is depth. The Jaguars second, third, and fourth strings were completely outplayed by the Patriot’s backups and it was something that took me by surprise. There is easily 20 to 30 players on the Jaguars that do not deserve to finish the preseason as apart of this team with their play last night. The people who were noticeably bad were Guy Whimper, Terrance Wheatley, Terrell Whitehead, Tiquan Underwood, and Russel Allen.

All in all I saw a lot of things that I love about this team even though they were without many of their starters. Jacksonville is defiantly a huge sleeper team this year and I am excited to see what they will do with their potential. GO Jags!