Jaguars Want To Improve Their Physicality, But Can They?
That is one of the overarching questions facing the Jaguars this offseason. The lack of physicality, specifically in the trenches, has been an Achilles heel for the Jaguars since the 2017 season — the last time they were truly trench bullies.
Can that change in one offseason? With a general manager who has been in charge of the last three drafts, can the Jaguars suddenly flip the switch and find a way to turn from a finesse team into one that can go toe-to-toe with the NFL’s best defensive and offensive lines?
“Physicality, guys that have physicality, they’re kind of born with it,” Jaguars general manager Trent Baalke said on Tuesday at the NFL Scouting Combine.
“You can shape it a little bit, you can mature it over time, the more confident they get, the more physical they play. There’s a lot of things that go into that. Usually, those guys are just wired differently.”
Baalke himself has bemoaned the Jaguars’ lack of physicality this offseason, especially along the offensive line. But it is also Baalke who has led the Jaguars in offseasons where they have added offensive linemen Walker Little and defensive lineman Roy Robertson-Harris. Head coach Doug Pederson has been there, too, when the Jaguars have added other linemen such as Luke Fortner, Brandon Scherff, Ezra Cleveland, Anton Harrison, and Foley Fatukasi.
The Jaguars want to get more physical, but do they have the brain trust to find and develop such players? The last three offseasons call that into question.
“Our offensive line, if you talk to these guys individually, they know and we know that it wasn’t our best. As a coaching staff, I put a lot of this on us and making sure that we’re doing the right things to put our players in position,” Pederson said on Tuesday.
“You’ve heard me say this a lot, put our players in position to be successful. Give them an opportunity; and that falls on us as coaches through game planning and scheming and not having too much, just having the right amount of plays to execute. In turn, that falls back on the player. The player has to go out and play and use his God given ability to go execute the play. We’re going to continue to look, to improve, we always talk about competition and we want to bring in players to add value and depth at every position. We have to coach it better, we have to teach it better, we have to detail it and it all starts in the offseason.”
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