Jacksonville Jaguars have wide gap in ceiling and floor for 2016
By Daniel Lago
The Jacksonville Jaguars have high expectations for 2016, but things could go south if all their new additions don’t come together.
With the preseason wrapped up, it’s time to start looking towards the regular season and recalibrating our expectations for the upcoming campaign after seeing how the team looks on the field. After dominating for 2 preseason games before looking downright awful in the third game against the Cincinnati Bengals, the Jacksonville Jaguars haven’t really revealed much in terms of how they will perform this year.
While I still have relatively high expectations for the team, I could certainly see a scenario where they disappoint and Gus Bradley loses his job.
Elliott Harrison over at NFL.com recently went through what he believes to be the ceiling and floor for each team, and he has a fairly sizable gap between the two scenarios for the Jaguars.
"JACKSONVILLE JAGUARSCeiling: 11-5. QB Blake Bortles limits his costly turnovers, while the coaching staff leans more on its running backs (Chris Ivory and T.J. Yeldon) and defense (which looks to be stronger on paper) than at any time in the Gus Bradley era. While we’re high on the Jaguars, we’re not going higher than 11-5.Floor: 4-12. Huge pendulum swing here, mostly because history tells us 4-12 is normal in Jacksonville. The Allen Brothers would slump drastically in this outcome, with tight end Julius Thomas adding little. Ditto new safety Tashaun Gipson on defense. But none of this is likely with the Jags’ schedule."
There are a lot of things going wrong in Harrison’s “Floor” scenario for the Jaguars, and the reality is it would be a colossal disaster if this team finished with 5 wins or less. Heck, Bradley is probably gone if they don’t win at least 7 games. The Jaguars have added too much talent, regardless of how young they are, to settle for anything less than being in playoff contention in December.
The ceiling scenario sounds about right. The Jaguars have a fairly tough schedule and would have to catch some big breaks to approach 11 or 12 wins.