Arg so its been awhile and I'm not so good at this blogging thing. So every week Brian Burke of http://www.advancednflstats.com/ puts out probabilities for each game. As best I can tell its a fairly straight forward logit regression model but he uses some interesting explanatory variables, with a focus (naturally) towards predictive variables and independence. In any case, this week the model gave the Jaguars an incredibly low chance of winning, and maybe they deserve it, but check it out. 17%. Sheesh and I don't even think this takes into account Garrard returning from a concussion.

http://fifthdown.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/28/week-8-n-f-l-game-probabilities-and-the-loss-of-romo/

I'm going to attempt to do a Sunday or Monday response post to the game with some initial thoughts from now on (I'll remember this line when I haven't posted in three weeks).

A couple of delayed opinions:

• I don't see any advantage to getting rid of Del Rio or Garrard this season other than to appease the fans. Generally, that's a poor decision making metric for winning football games. They'd both get paid regardless (cash matters in Jax) and what's frustrating is their actual performance is inconsistent with a fairly average final result. You're not going to get more consistency by firing your coach, and while you could get more consistent performance at QB, I think it's going to come with a performance cost. There's a reason all of our QBs (except Garrard) were on the street two weeks ago. Garrard will still produce good, seemingly great games this season (hard to accept I know). That said, after the season, ship em' out.
• I understand the call for Del Rio's head but do people honestly think this Jags team is underachieving record wise? I can't imagine them being better than 3-4 with that secondary. I thought I was being pessimistic wondering if the Jags had the worst secondary ever after Ryan Fitzpatrick had his way with us but its a more legitimate position with every passing week.
  
• I was totally shocked when the Jags cut Scott Starks and thought he'd get picked up somewhere (always a decent test for talent level). Well, he's still out there...once again, not a good sign when your presumptive preseason third corner has been on the street all year.

On a more blasphemous note, I'm a little worried about Gene Smith's picks. I'm not calling for action (I don't do call for action for the record) but my long term enthusiasm has been tempered somewhat. It may be unfair and the result of injuries more than anything else but with Britton and Cox clearly showing less progress than hoped, Terrence Knighton is the only clear bright spot left. Monroe may still pull through but he's disappointed me this year. Gene Smith deserves his chance and he'll get years to let this play out but with four of his fifteen picks on IR, and two more under-performing (Monroe and Cox), my faith has been tested somewhat. We'll see.

The lead up to this game has been odd. Whenever I've read bad news for the Jags (no shortage of material this week), Cowboys fans have been in the comments absolutely trashing their team. Something has got to give this week. Who knows, maybe Wade Phillips will help us out?

-Q