Jacksonville Jaguars: .500 or bust for 2016
By Luke Sims
The Jacksonville Jaguars have slowly been getting better under head coach Gus Bradley, but it’s time for the team to officially make the jump and turn in a winning record.
It has been nine full seasons since the last time the Jacksonville Jaguars posted a winning record.
If the Jags don’t make it above .500 in 2016, it will have been a full decade.
That 2007 team went 11-5 and had a point differential of +107. Since then, it’s been all downhill. The Jags have a high water mark of 8-8 (-66 point differential) since then and that 2010 team wasn’t anything to write home about.
It takes a long time to change the culture of an NFL franchise. It sometimes takes longer to get a team over the top and turn it into a competitor.
Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan is hoping that the culture part is now done under general manager Dave Caldwell and head coach Gus Bradley. Now, it’s time to prove that the franchise can be a competitor.
Khan made that clear in the recent address at Everbank Field, “We’ve spent time, patience and investment to build a solid foundation that’s going to last for a long time.” He added that it is a reasonable expectation for the franchise to now finish with above a .500 record for the first time since he bought the team four years ago.
Khan is a patient owner, providing a stark contrast to some of the more volatile people in charge of their respective franchises, but there’s no way he’s going to suffer through mediocrity and call it success. He’s a winner in the business world, he knows what it takes to build something great, and he also knows when to walk away and try a different tactic.
No matter what happens in 2016, Khan knows that the work turned in to this point has put the franchise in a better position to succeed going forward. He turned a team that was wallowing in mismanagement into a team with a respectable foundation on which to build. The foundation may be mediocre three seasons in, but it is much better than what was there before.
Now it’s time to build something on top of that. 2016’s expectation of getting above .500 is certainly reasonable and nobody will blame Khan if he goes in a different direction following another lackluster season.
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So, for Gus Bradley and Dave Caldwell, it’s time to show results. Otherwise, expect big changes for the Jacksonville Jaguars.