A.G. Gancarski
Former Jacksonville Jaguars’ head coach Gus Bradley almost got four years to implement the three year plan he said he had when he got hired.
With two meaningless games left in a 2-12 season, mired in a nine-game losing streak, after another gut punch of a loss to yet another mediocre team the Jags looked up to in the AFC South standings, Shad Khan pulled the plug.
“I thought it would be best to do it immediately after today’s result so Gus can step away, relax and regroup with his family during the Christmas and holiday season,” Khan said in a statement.
Khan and many others around the team lauded Bradley for his personality, his upbeat spirit, and so on.
They couldn’t laud him for his record, which made him the “worst coach in NFL history” according to fan site Big Cat Country.
BCC relates that “14 wins in 55 games … makes Bradley, statistically speaking, the worst head coach in the modern era of the NFL.”
Bradley’s closing nine-game losing streak? The cherry atop that sundae of futility.
The timing for such historic, abysmal failure couldn’t be worse, in one sense.
Jacksonville spent $43 million in 2013 — borrowed money to be funded by the local bed tax — for its new scoreboards for EverBank Field.
Council approved that 14-2, after the Jags ended an eight-game skid.
Last year, the city committed to more capital improvements for the sports complex.
Of the $90 million cost, $45 million will be shouldered by the city of Jacksonville.
Since Bradley was hired as coach, the city has budgeted $88 million for sports complex enhancements.
City leaders sell these as cheaper than a new stadium would be, as necessary to bring new revenue into this small market, and so on.
Still, to put that $88 million in perspective, a sobering number from a Florida Times-Union article from last year: “The tourism tax has generated between $4.6 million and $6.5 million per year over the last decade for City Hall.”
Though the cost of borrowing money has been cheap throughout the Obama era, the reality is that the city committed roughly two decades of bed tax revenue to these projects.
So they’ve got to succeed.
The amphitheater and the practice field are expected to be open for the 2017 season, but the reality is that another season of Gus Bradley would have taken some of that new facility sheen off of the openings.
Years ago, he had become a punchline. Jags fans knew that no matter how ignominious the defeat was, they could still count on Bradley to deliver happy talk about the effort put out.
The media, meanwhile, wondered how long Khan would give him. I know this, as I covered the team on game days up until 2015.
During the 2013, 2014, and 2015 seasons, the press corps conversations as they waited for Bradley to tell them where the latest game went wrong were as toxic as the halftime hot dogs in the press box.
2016 was a year when the Jags became the chic pick to win the AFC South.
That optimism was predicated on Blake Bortles making the leap into Andrew Luck territory, carrying the Jags’ offense along with him.
However, Bortles regressed in 2016, losing the ability or confidence to throw deep.
The quarterback shied away from throwing jump balls to Allen Robinson, preferring instead to throw safe, short passes to backup tight ends and depth chart wide receivers.
Bortles has one more year on his deal, and it’s going to be interesting to see how the Jaguars brand with a new coach.
Can the 2017 Jaguar branding — which will almost assuredly attempt to synergize with the opening of the amphitheater and the covered practice field — really yoke itself to Bortles, who looks more like vintage Blaine Gabbert than the quarterback of the future?
If someone comes in and outperforms Bortles in preseason, as David Garrard did to Byron Leftwich over a decade ago, will Bortles even be on the roster in the regular season?
This and dozens of other football questions have yet to be answered. Or even considered as more than hypotheticals.
What isn’t hypothetical: the city of Jacksonville invested nearly $100 million — a month of its operating budget, give or take — into the sports complex during a time when the worst long-term coaching performance in NFL history was happening.
Jaguars fans will demand more than a new hashtag, a new slogan, and a new variation on the black and teal color scheme.
They will demand tangible results.
Thus far, the Jags have had fewer challenges lobbying City Hall than winning on the field.
A change, this time, has got to come.
The capital improvements are being delivered.
Now it’s time for Shad Khan’s group to deliver on the field.
