Love it or Hate it: Acceptance

Welp, the Jaguars are 1-5, 3rd place in the AFC South, 32nd in pass offense and struggling to create turnovers. Quite simply, the Jaguars are reeling. How should we as fans feel about all of this. One word. Acceptance. We need to accept the situation and approach it from a different angle.

Accept losing? WTF is wrong with you Jason!? Nothing. I’ve just gone through the stages of grief more quickly than many of you. I started with denial, saying, “we’re still good, we’re still good!“. The anger followed shortly after, pointing my ire at a punter. If the offense was scoring, the punter wouldn’t be a problem, but I guess the anger had to be directed at someone. Bargaining came next. Who could the Jags trade for, what could we pay to make things better. This was a smaller stage, because we all knew GM Gene wasn’t paying for help at that stage in the game. Depression followed the Carolina game. The game was easily winnable. The Bengals game was winnable. Hell, the Steelers and Saints games were winnable. It’s not that the team was super, awful horrible, its that they teased us with chances of success, followed by failure. To me, that’s a hell of alot worse than being blown out, at least with a blow out, you can make light of it, or you turn the channel or go home or whatever. You can avoid it, because its easier to avoid. However, when there are glimmers of hope, slivers of life, chances of victory, it causes you to tune in and hang on the edge of your seat, and only at the apex of anxiety do the Jags go and lose, making the loss so much worse. There is hope however, hope through acceptance. I’m there.

How is there hope through acceptance? Accept that your team is struggling, accept that the team is a 1-win team. Accept that this year is a growth year. Look at Gabbert, Rackley, Prosinski, et al. So many rookies thrust into starting roles. Accept that they are rookies and they need time to grow. If you do that, then watching the team struggle isn’t a downer, its expected. Lowering the bar makes every victory, no matter how small that much greater. With this lowered expectation level, you can now focus on other things, like the growth of individual players because you don’t expect a win. Accept that your Jags just aren’t as good as we’d hope they’d be, but have hope that they are right there, right on the cusp as Rashean would say. Have hope, because hope is around the corner.

On a side note, if the Jags struggle for the rest of the year, guess what, they get some high picks and could potentially trade down to get more players OR… the Jags could be in play for Blackmon or Jeffery, two major WRs in the collegiate ranks. Here’s another nugget of hope, the draft next year is deep in upper level WR and DE talent.