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Jacksonville Jaguars: Team must demonstrate progress

By Luke Sims

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Jacksonville Jaguars head coach Gus Bradley wants his team to keep getting better. It’s been drilled into the Jaguars since his arrival a little more than two seasons ago and it’s part of the core philosophy of the first-time head coach.

From the players on up, the Jaguars have to keep getting better.

For 2015, that’s true for the franchise as a whole, hopefully demonstrated through the win/loss record. After a 4-12 campaign in 2013 and a 3-13 campaign in 2014, the Jaguars are hungry to show that they have gotten better. The team is yearning to show that the progress can finally translate to wins on the field.

Owner Shad Khan is patient with the Jacksonville Jaguars. He knows that wins can come if he has the right people in place and he is willing to take the time to see it through. Conor Orr at NFL.com sees the same, saying:

"General manager Dave Caldwell and head coach Gus Bradley are almost universally thought of as the right people to turn around the Jaguars. The team’s owner, Shad Khan, is also thought of as patient, pragmatic and understanding. But at some point, people are going to need some tangible progress from an organization that is built on a mammoth number of high draft picks and expensive free agents."

2015, the third year of a massive rebuild, is the time to finally demonstrate some progress. It was almost surprising to see the Jaguars take a step backward from four wins to three in 2014 (though some of those games were a lot closer and could have been victories). While the team lost one more game in year two, you could almost feel the team getting better. There was a buzz around them wasn’t wholly centered on quarterback Blake Bortles.

I’ve written about how we measure success for the Jaguars before and how it ultimately comes down to that win/loss record. I know the rebuild is going to continue past 2015, so we have to find a way to demonstrate progress. To me, that means moving up some major statistical categories. It’s about getting the offense out of the bottom rankings, it’s about the defense finally rising to be in the top half, and it’s about the momentum changers like turnovers being among the league’s best.

No matter where the Jacksonville Jaguars end up at the end of 2015, if they can prove themselves better in some of those measurable ways then they will have progressed toward becoming a team with a better win/loss record.

Next: Marqise Lee to be limited during training camp

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