Beat the bad (and the Colts)

This little bit from Paul Kuharsky reinforces the thought I was trying to convey yesterday. The Jags beat the bad teams (Denver, Buffalo, and Dallas) plus the Colts.

It's not getting any easier but the Texans looked imminently beatable yesterday so maybe if we can pick up the "easy" wins (read teams we're better than) and pick off one against Houston and someone else we'll have a chance.

-Q

Thank you Mr. Phillips

Yesterday, the Jaguars beat the Dallas Cowboys handily. Teams coming off back to back 20 point losses are not supposed to win handily. They pulled a similar trick with the Colts (although beating a dysfunctional 1-5 Cowboys team doesn't produce quite the same emotional reaction). So many, many people are saying there's some significant variance to the Jags performance, and that's undoubtedly true. They haven't been consistent but honestly when you step back, the outcomes pretty much line up right where you'd expect an average team in the NFL to fall. A quick look:
1) Beat the Broncos who aren't very good and are dysfunctional.
2) Lost to Philly and San Diego, two teams with a significant talent advantage it would seem. Certainly not games I'd expect the Jags to win if they played again.
3) Beat the Colts - This is the real aberration, especially given the secondary, but honestly the Colts aren't very good. They're a one man show which leaves them vulnerable.
4) Beat a bad Buffalo team. This is a team the Jags should beat consistently.
5) Lost to Kansas City. A team a year (or maybe more) ahead of the Jags in terms of rebuilding but probably their only loss which they maybe could've won.
6) Beat Dallas. Another dysfunctional team.

Coaches often get criticized for playing too much to the final score but the results of this season shouldn't have Del Rio feeling as much heat as he is. I have to wonder if he wishes he'd altered his strategy more to keep games close even if it didn't give them the best chance to win. Del Rio has taken a lot of punishment but the Jags have had a coaching advantage in at least 5 of their games (Denver, San Diego, Indy, Buffalo and Dallas). Anywho, onto thoughts about the game:

• Uche said this about Garrard and I thought it was spot on: "When he's on his game, he's on his game. When he's focused in and dialed in and making good decisions, he's a top-tier guy. That's what we need from him every week." Yesterday was a better game for Garrard than Trent Edwards, or Todd Bouman, have ever played. If the Jags have any hope of getting hot this season, and it looks like they'll need to if they want to avoid the blackouts, it rests on the idiosyncratic arm of one David Douglas Garrard.
• I mentioned last week that Dallas fans were pessimistic. For good reason. Every semi-intelligent Jags fan should thank themselves that we have Wayne Weaver and not a Jerry Jones or Mike Brown. I can't imagine how sickening it must feel to have an owner/gm. Every problem your team has flows right from the tippy top, which ultimately means that people can't be held responsible. To put this in perspective, imagine Shack Harris owned the Jaguars. Except its worse. Cause now Shack doesn't do scouting or watch tape (at best these owner/gms are watching 50% of the tape that a guy like Gene smith watches and I'd say that's pushing it). He's also never getting fired and even if he does the smart thing and brings in a real football person, he'll chase them away (See Parcells, Bill). I think I'll write a Christmas card to Mr. Weaver.
• So last week I wrote about the prediction model giving the Jags a 17% chance of winning. Couple that with a slew of experts who unanimously picked the Cowboys (Cause you always should go with that Phillips-Kitna combo when available) and the Jags looked like an unlikely victor. Let this be a lesson to all those budding econometricians out there: Predicting individual outcomes is difficult. One side note: "Experts" are going to go with the fan base that annoys them the most. They know they'll hear from cowboys fans if they blow the pick but Jags fans aren't going to have the clout to get noticed. This isn't a whining thing. If anything I think its good for the Jags. Preseason hype doesn't win you games and has a habit of infecting minds. Players can read too.
  
• For the record, the prediction models record for the Jags this season is 2-3 (started in week 4). It has predicted the Jags to lose every game. It gave the Jags their greatest chance against Tennessee (43%) and their worst chance against Kansas City (14%). Oddly those are the two games it got right. I'll keep watching
• When this season is over a lot is going to be written about Derek Cox, his future with the Jags, and Del Rio. Player evaluation has normally been Del Rio's wheel house (I want a wheel house. Just sounds fun) but he messed this situation up. Cox has flashed and if nothing else can catch. He was undeniably bad against Denver and maybe he was hurt, we'll probably never know, but didn't deserve to be sat for so long especially considering the play of the secondary. While by no mean a firable offense if Del Rio is gone after this season its partly to him yanking the chain on Mr. Cox. Cox has flashed was more than Derrick Harvey and we've kept his ass on the field through thick and thin. Coaches don't normally blow things in this manner so maybe Del Rio is ahead of the curve on this. My fear is its all been a power play against Gene Smith but that seems crazy. Once again, just keep watching.
• David Garrard, fourth rated QB in the NFL this season. I wonder if he just goes home looks in the mirror and says 'suck it Jags fans.' People act like this up and down thing has always been his trademark but in 2007, he threw 15 TDs and 3 interceptions, and he's consistently been criticized for being a game manager. I don't know except to say we should ride it out. If it was a movie it would be more dramatic, riveting even, but since we have to watch the games I think excruciating is more apt.
  

Looking forward, we know a lot about teams now, what happens if we beat the teams we should beat:
1) Bye. Done. Almost victory or at least feels not bad. Holding strong at 4-4.
2) Houston, beatable but they're the better team. 4-5
3) Cleveland, fingers crossed for Colt McCoy. Regardless, 5-5.
4) @NY Giants, yeah that's not gonna happen. 5-6
5) @Tennessee. Hopefully it won't deflate us. 5-7
6) Oakland. I'm not buying them. Plus they play to our strengths. 6-7
7) @Indianapolis. Can we sweep the Colts? Hmmm, sadly, let's be conservative. 6-8
8) Washington. Hooray for dysfunctional franchises. 7-8
9) @Houston. Maybe Schaub will get hurt but otherwise...7-9

So I'd say that's out expected finish at this point. it basically shakes down to us beating bad teams without quality quarterbacks. We shall see...

-Q

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

Down Goes Peyton! Down Goes Peyton!

Hmmm, biggest win for Jags since 2007 (at least) and I re-start blogging. I am either a big bandwagon jumper or lazy (I've been watching I swear). Anyway, here's my thoughts

1) As good as this feels now, if the Jags go 4-12 or 5-11, I don't think it'll matter much. That said, it feels really good and I can't remember ever being more proud of a Del Rio coached team.

2) Seriously, what the hell is going on with Derek Cox? I mean, yeah he had a bad game against Denver but David Jones is not good. He's certainly confident but I actually think he is kind of a shabby corner. In an odd way though I sort of trust the coaching staff on this one. when something seems this obvious to fans there always seems to be something we don't know about. I hope Derek Cox gets back on track though.

3) Speaking of WTFs, um...Mike Sims-Walker, where are you? I don't know what's going on here but the ceiling for this offense is pretty low if he doesn't take a step forward.

4) So the secondary has been bad, really bad, a borderline joke but I actually don't think Rashean Mathis has played too poorly. He got beat on the Maclin touchdown at the end of the first half against the Eagles, and that was bad no doubt, but otherwise big plays seem to be going to the other side. Unfortunately, it might just be that the right side is so weak, why attempt throwing at Mathis? A simple comparison of Reggie Wayne vs Austin Collie's stats from this past weekend illustrates my point well. Wayne had 15 catches for 196 yards, Collie had 5 catches for 39 yards with a TD. It appeared Gerald Alexander was responsible for Collie on the TD as well but only the coaches know that for sure. In any case I think Mathis isn't getting his due and if the Jags could lock up the RCB their secondary play would improve considerably.

5) Interesting stat all things considered: Mo-Jo's 322 rushing yards are a career high through 4 games. Interesting considering consensus is he's had a slow start. I imagine that is mostly fantasy blowback for the lack of TDs but my lying eyes do tell me he's lacking burst and the less than ideal 3.9 yards a carry backs that up. Hopefully, the little tank that could gets those yards a little easier from now on. He's clearly hobbled though

6) A really quiet day for Dwight Freeney and Robert Mathis. I was way too absorbed in the game to watch Monroe and Britton closely but hopefully their play was as stellar as Freeney and Mathis' was quiet.

7) So we all love to hate on Shack Harris, and rightfully so, but lets point out that the 2006 draft yielded Marcedes Lewis and Mo-Jo (and of course nothing else, but quiet I'm making a point). Those two, and possibly Daryl Smith, are the only players the Jags have who are currently one of the 5 to 10 best at their position in the NFL. Which is to say, that the Jags potentially have a distinct talent advantage there thanks to Mr. Harris. They scored three of the four touchdowns yesterday so, while I'm glad you're gone, thanks for not leaving the cupboard totally bare Shack.

8) Where do we go from here? A quick run down of the schedule seems to indicate a long way to go. When it first came out it looked as if the 1st qtr of the season was going to be the most difficult, and it may still be, but there's little place to look for relief. The next four are the Bills, Titans, Chiefs and Cowboys. We need to win at least two of those games and I think the Bills are feistier than Jags fans give them credit for. After that we still have two games against the division leading Texans, another game against the Colts and Titans, throw in the Redskins and Giants, neither of whom are slouches. The easiest games in the final stretch appear to be the Raiders and Browns but it wasn't too long ago the Jags were considered finished and its the NFL, so yeah, we got a ways to go...

A final note: I hope this season lives up to the potential this game allows it to. I'm a cynical, awful person to watch football games with and this one brought me to the edge of tears yesterday (hell, it's doing it right now). This one really felt special. God, it was amazing.

-Q

The Ticket Situation

It was recently released that the Jaguars would need to sell approximately 11,000 tickets to avoid blackouts this season. Of that, approximately 6,000 are the fans responsibility and 5,000 will come from group sales.

I’ve had a fear for quite sometime that there’s no ticket push coming in July despite it traditionally being the best sales month. I think the Jaguars may have pulled demand forward through the 30 for 30 plan and the publicity from Team Teal. If true, sadly, it means the whale is going to stay on the beach for a while longer and the Jaguars long term ability to stay in Jacksonville is going to be exposed in a (if it’s possible) even more devastating way.

A couple of thoughts on pulling tickets sales forward:
• It’s a good thing. There’s no value in waiting. It doesn’t in any way diminish fans who stepped up. Better to get those tickets sold than to wait. It also brings into focus exactly how dire the situation is.
• Downside. There probably aren’t a ton of people out there who a) don’t know tickets are available and b) need you to do something to make them more enticing, which means the hardest tickets to sell are the ones we have left. If the free 30 month loan and $2,000 dollars worth of Teal Deals didn’t do it nor the threat of the team leaving didn’t/civic duty push, I don’t know if realistically there’s much that can be done right now to make tickets more appealing. They can’t be cheaper or more public than they are now.

At this point I think the Jags only have a few options left in the gimmick department. They may bring back out the half-season packs they used last year. I have no idea how successful they were but I think that could still be an appealing package for a segment of consumers. That said, the Jags probably know exactly how successful those packages were and the effect those had on other sales, so I’m guessing we won’t be seeing any half-packs(they’ve also started selling single game preseason tickets which I think may signal a shift in focus towards single game sales).

A smart option, that I really hope the Jags employ, is to offer the Denver game, the Indy game and/or the Titans game as packages coupled with a less attractive game from later in the season (See Oakland and Cleveland. Although, I am personally excited to see the corpse of Al Davis and Jake Delhomme in consecutive home games).

The bottom line is that unless there’s a rush of demand from some unforeseen market (Come on Orlando and Savannah!), then the Jags are going to be fighting a week to week battle with the blackout monster. The ability of the Jags to win that fight is going to be based on a few factors outside of their control (namely unemployment and weather) but also on how hot a ticket they can be once the season starts. On the plus side, they’re going to have some time to get the ball rolling with the Broncos, Eagles, Colts and Titans. The downside is those games are easier to sell out (with the exception of Denver) because those teams are competitive rivals who will be fighting for playing spots. Realistically, for the Jags to be hot, I think they need to come home to Houston 6-2 or better, and probably on a 4 or 5 game win streak. Can they do it? Who knows but that’s why they play the games, right?

-AQW

New York Times take on the Jags

A pretty scathing review of the Jags in the NY Times. It's pretty smart and definitely in-depth. I think he's too critical of Garrard and his characterization of Sims-Walker as inconsistent seems like someone just looking at stats but overall a very impressive take on the Jags from a national writer.

http://fifthdown.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/14/jacksonville-jaguars-2010-season-preview/#more-46025

Agent's influence

Be warned, not a Jaguars post.

Pro Football Talk had a post last night regarding the influence of agents on broadcasters and on the potential consequences leading up to the draft. Leaving aside the fact that members of the media have little to no influence on NFL GMs (the smart ones at least), how much influence do agents have over clients?

Longtime readers of PFT know they generally overstate the influence an agency or agent has over a client. They see agents as having tons of influence in the league. They may be right, who knows, but I've been around a few NFL front offices and lets just say they're not respected much. PFT draws an analogy to their relationship with NBC but to me that is fundamentally different. NBC pays PFT but the situation is reversed for agents and clients. I don't see what incentive a client has for complying with an agent's request to promote another client (assuming they're not paying him under the table to do so). The agency can threaten to drop the client or negotiate a weaker contract for them but then the client could simply choose another agent who would better represent their interests.

Now if the agency is paying a broadcaster or member of the media under the table then that is a legitimate problem but there's nothing that says an agency needs to have a broadcaster as a client to pay them under a table. Also, lets be real, those relationship are clearly ethical violations and aren't going to easily come to light regardless of the expectation for disclosure.

As for disclosure, you don't want to imply through disclosure that there's bias when in fact there isn't. That's an unnecessary threat to the trust between a media member and their audience (to the extent that such trusts exists, which I believe it does). It also would detract from times when a member of the media has a more legitimate conflict of interest.

To the extent that agents matter, its in that they may facilitate or guide their clients to teams who they have a more natural relationship with. If an agent is on good terms with a team, that team may have an advantage in getting that agent's players to sign. As for client to client, I don't see the evidence or the incentive.

Now a more interesting question may be what influence does a client have over an agent? A scenario, Client A is a declining superstar. Client B is a young buck who hits the free agent market. They share the same agent. If Client A has enough stature then its not inconceivable that they may be able to dissuade their agent from having Client B come to their team. An agent would also have some incentive to guide Client B to a team where he wouldn't compete with his clients. The gains in this scenario mostly go to Client A, with the losses being some marginal loss to Client B (both in salary and best team fit) and with the agent losing some in commission and risking their reputation for getting their client the best deal. How likely is this scenario? I'd say not very. You need a perfect storm with just the right balance of interests. Also, sports agents are ruthlessly competitive and I think an agent who tried to consistently pull this move would lose out eventually but that doesn't mean it can't happen once in a while, especially with superstar clients.

Conspiracy theories are fun and some of them are bound to be truish but I don't think agents are puppet masters.

-A.Q Dub