Jaguars waste no time undoing Ryan Nielsen's biggest blunder at training camp

On paper, it looked like the Jacksonville Jaguars had hit it out of the ballpark when they hired Ryan Neilsen as their defensive coordinator in 2024. After all, he enjoyed success and was highly respected in his previous stops, the New Orleans Saints and the Atlanta Falcons. Unfortunately, his hiring turned out to be a crass mistake, one that the Jags paid dearly for.

With Nielsen at the helm, Jacskonville fielded one of the worst defenses in the league, ranking near the cellar of most meaningful categories. Looking back, it's easy to underestand why the mustachioed coach came crashing down.

Right off the bat, Nielsen rubbed players the wrong way with his arrogant demeanor. Similarly, he routinely employed a hockey rotation at linebacker, which forced his best players to leave the field and prevented them from hitting their stride.

Granted, Nielsen didn't have the personnel to run his scheme, but the cupboard wasn't fully bare. He had a pair of bookend pass rushers in Travon Walker and Josh Hines-Allen, a pretty good linebacker in Foyesade Oluokun, and a pair of intriguing safeties in Andre Cisco and Darnell Savage. That all of them underperform is an indictment of their defensive coordinator.

That said, there's one glaring mistake Nielsen made, and it wasn't discussed nearly as much until his successor, Anthony Campanile, took the reins.

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The Jaguars defense is leaner and faster with Anthony Campanile

Ryan Nielsen asked defensive linemen to bulk up in 2024. This sort of makes sense when you take into account that the Jacksonville Jaguars used to get pushed around the line of scrimmage in prior years. Adding weight, in theory, would allow them to hold their ground. But in practice, it made them sluggish and robbed them of their burst.

Travon Walker, for one, talked about how gaining weight decreased his stamina. Teammate Josh Hines-Allen echoed the sentiment, and both of them cited the increased weigth as a reason they might've not been nearly as productive in 2024 as they were the year prior.

Granted, bulking up alone wasn't the sole reason the Jaguars defense as a whole struggled last year, but it certainly played a part. Veteran safety Andrew Wingard recently said as much during a one-on-one exchange with Brent Martineau of Action News Jax. Here's a fragment of the conversation below.

"And it's funny, you talk about weight, I was in OTAs, and I was, you know, I did a bunch of lifting in the offseason. I wanted to get big, and I was like 213 pounds, and got out in OTAs, and I was just like, forgive me, sorry," Wingard told Martineau when asked how gaining weight held the defense back last year. "So getting in the summer, all we did was run. Me, Foye, and Chad. We were all training out in Denver at the altitude, and I dropped 10 pounds. Come out today, and I feel like a new man."

Wingard continued, "So that is definitely a point they told some guys to get bigger last year. This is the 2025 National Football League. It ain't Jack Lambert and Mike Singletary banging heads every play. It's almost turned into soccer conditioning or rugby conditioning, so absolutely. You look at Devin, even myself, I lost 10 pounds. we're all leaner. We're lean, keeping the strength, but it's a running man's league. So yeah, we'll feel pretty good."

It's too early to tell if Anthony Campanile will succeed, but so far, he's off to a strong start, getting rave reviews from players ahead of the regular season. And if the Jaguars defense turns the corner, you can circle back to the decision to get leaner as one of the catalysts.

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