After 8 months, the Jaguars finally returned to the field for an actual NFL game last Thursday. The bad thing is, they left with a lopsided loss and surrendered 47 points to the Patriots. As the preseason is infamous for doing, the final score masks what really matters. In this case, our A/B team held their own against the Patriots A/B team, which is a completely satisfactory result this soon after returning to “normal” football life. Although there are some concerns with the first unit, I found reasons to be optimistic. (more…)

Zelenka Fan Club President and one of the all around best Jaguars fans, “Arrow Man”, wrote about what happened after the game on the Jaguars message board:

Forgive me for another post regarding Joe Z. I just got back from the game and Joe played his last game with the Jaguars tonight. It was sad to see him on the sidelines all night wearing a hat. And after the game he gave me his helmet as a thank you to all of his fans who supported him all these years. The Jaguars may have a new long snapper, but they do not have another Joe Zelenka.

In his 8 years with the Jags Joe never had a bad snap. He practiced relentlessly and it showed with his 11 years in the NFL.

When he was on the field he was totally focused on football. Off the field he was one of the nicest guys in the world. Jeff Lagemann has a saying about Joe Z – “If there were more Joe Zelenkas in the world, the world would be a better place.”

Over the years when other players were getting in trouble with drugs or alcohol, Joe was serving the Jacksonville community. Ronald McDonald House, HabiJax, Wolfsons Childrens Hospital, and Straight Talk are a few of the charitable organization that Joe gave his time and talent. But he also spent a lot of time with Jaguar fans. Over the years he attended hundreds of events for fans to get autographs. He loved to bring a smile to a fan’s face.

Joe also had a sense of humor that was one of the best in the locker room. Fans could see it on the Jumbotron with his locker room interviews.

Thank you Joe for all that you gave to the Jaguars and the Jacksonville community. You will be missed very much! If you have a Joe Z experience, please share it.

In other words, Joe Zelenka was a class act up until the end.  Here’s hoping that you land a job in the organization or in the media so us fans can enjoy you and your sense of humor for years to come.

The way camp is set up, there are three fields and the offense is furthest away from the fans.  The middle field has the defense and the closest one has three dudes chilling out (also known as special teams). You can get closer to the offense but with my girl crush on our kicker, I was happily staying right where I was. Unfortunately, the only person who did anything fun to watch was our long snapper Joe Zelenka. Josh Scobee teased the crowd by running up to the ball and then not kicking it and Adam Podlesh faked punts by practicing to drop the ball.

Though I don’t say it much, I am going to take this chance to really reinforce how awesome Joe Zelenka is.  He is funny and he is amazingly good at what he does. That is probably why he’s been on our team since 2001.

Besides special teams, it was pretty difficult to judge how well the defense was doing. I could see them practicing interceptions/blocking for interceptions but beyond that it was hard to tell. Plus, since they don’t tackle and they don’t have pads on, you really can’t see true performance anyway.

In the back field, you could see a quarterback throwing balls to people who were catching them. Unfortunately, because I was so far away I couldn’t really see who was throwing and who was catching. The only person who stood out was Matt Jones who I still got confused with Richard Angulo. To their credit, the tall white gangly guys were catching the football.

Because I didn’t see much, I am going to rely on news reports to help me out on the breakdown of the offense and I am going to give it to you in a nice breakdown:

Troy Williamson (who I am rooting for like crazy) has continued to do well in training camp:

He beat the defense badly; toasted two defensive backs who could do little more than watch the pass sail over their heads and into Williamson’s hands. Then, there was a pregnant pause. Would the ball stick in Williamson’s hands? Yeah, like glue.

Last night was the first night of Oklahoma drills:

Only a few players are picked for the drill and tight end Marcedes Lewis got the call in each of his first two seasons against Reggie Hayward and Justin Durant. He said he did well both times.

One reason to keep Matt Jones around (from the same article as above):

The Jaguars lost another wide receiver Sunday when Dennis Northcutt suffered a strained back. Coach Jack Del Rio said he’s day-to-day.

Jerry Porter, who is on the physically unable to perform list, is already likely to miss camp. And Reggie Williams is on the non-football injury list. Another receiver, Mike Walker, is limited to one practice a day with a knee injury.

Also, who says Jacksonville doesn’t care?

The Jaguars, who drew 3,346 fans to the two practices Saturday and 2,144 for the two practices Sunday, expect a big crowd tonight.

Also, my fellow Jaguar bloggers over at Big Cat Country have done amazing, in-depth looks at training camp.

Football season is almost here and you can feel it in the air.