'Savior' Andrew Wingard's enthusiastic remarks will get Jaguars fans hyped up

The Jacksonville Jaguars will soon be getting locker room leader Andrew Wingard back from injury. Although the player affectionately known as Dewey is a reserve safety and mostly contributes on special teams, the team has surely missed his leadership early in 2024. Just recently, he talked about his rehab and his expectations for the Jags moving forward.

Wingard met with the local media ahead of the Week 8 matchup against the Green Bay Packers. He says this is the first time had to miss significant time in his football career, pointing out that he hadn't suffered any major injuries and had to sit out a game at most at the time.

"Chris Bach, our director of whatever he's the director of, kicked my [ass] or three months. So conditioning is the least of my worries," Wingard said when asked what kind of shape he is. "So I feel really good, in that sense, to go over there and then work on the side. It's been weird the whole time, just because I've never been hurt before, really in my career, but it was good to get over there. It was nice."

Wingard continued, "It was relaxing stuff, definitely happy to be back... First high major injury, mate. I had a broken hand in high school. I think I broke my hand once I wrote the year two. But I've never missed more than one game at a time as bad as you want to be back on the field."

An undrafted free agent in 2019, Wingard has been a mainstay on special teams. He was also a full-time starter at safety in 2021 and has appeared in 76 games with 26 starts throughout his six-year career. The former Wyoming Cowboy suffered a knee injury in training camp and sat out the first seven games this season.

Wingard will be joining an underachieving Jaguars team that is trying to hold onto the season. He told the press corps that there's plenty of work to do but isn't tempering expectations.

"No, put the expectation. We're gonna freaking ball when I'm back out there, but I'm just gonna do what I do. Bring bring my leadership, bring my energy, bring my want to my will. I gonna take no for an answer. They wake up, pray to the same god I pray to type mentality. It's true. That's how you have to approach this thing. So whenever it is, I can't control results, but I can control running around with my head on fire, and playing as hard as I can get up," Wingard said.

Here's Wingard's full exchange with the local media, via 1010 XL.

Andrew Wingard knows what it takes for the Jaguars to make the playoffs

Andrew Wingard is one of the longest-tenured players on the Jacksonville Jaguars and he's been part of pretty bad teams. The one in 2020 that only won one game, and also the 2021 version that had to deal with the Urban Meyer debacle. On the other hand, the veteran safety was also part of the 2022 turnaround, so he knows a thing or two about making the playoffs.

Speaking of the 2022 Jaguars, Wingard said that they didn't do anything particularly different. Instead, they just put their head down and kept working.

"It's just crazy because nothing changed that year. It wasn't like there was just some X's and O's. We just kept chipping away, and we started getting dubbed. I think when we get into these late, early November games, this is when we get dangerous. Teams are starting to look at playoff pictures, they're starting to look at divisional races, and they're not really thinking about us. I think that's sort of jump on teams. And that's really what we did late in COVID too."

"I mean, jumped on Dallas, jumped on Baltimore, stuff like that. If you were to look at it on paper, you say, Oh god, we play Minnesota, we play Green Bay, we play Detroit, but it's like such a talented team. And I've been on bad teams here, bad teams that you knew literally had no chance. This team is seriously so good. I can't remember who asked it, but back to your point about being away from it, this team is damn good, damn good team. You got to go make plays. And we didn't make plays early."

The Jaguars will next face the Packers. As Wingard says, they just have to make plays. If they do, maybe they'll come out on top and keep their playoff hopes alive.

More Jaguars analysis here: