Ready to rise for a winning team

Jaguars great Tony Boselli served as the master of ceremonies for the event.  Before the team management appeared, he hosted a random assortment of Jaguars on stage, including Montell Owens, Derek Cox, Jeremy Mincey, Greg Jones, Brock Bolen, Zach Miller, John Chick, Ebben Britton,Corvey Irvin, and Corvey Orvin. Conspicuously absent was quarterback Blaine Gabbert. A sharply dressed Derek Cox enthusiastically addressed the crowd as did Montell Owens.

Once the leadership took the stage, Gene Smith was the first to speak.  It will be interesting to see whether he continues to be a public face. 1010 XL’s Rick Ballou has complained many a time that the public never sees Smith, that the general manager is ‘always in his bunker.’

The new head coach came was next to stand with the microphone.

The head coach speaks

He introduced the defensive coaching staff that has been assembled thus far.  There were big cheers, biggest of the evening in fact, for defensive coordinator Mel Tucker.

Finally, it was Shahid Khan’s turn.

The man and his moustache

None had anything of note to say in their remarks. The question and answer session did have a few things worth of mention:

• Mike Mularkey was asked whether the interview of Keenan McCardell (who was a star wide receiver opposite Jimmy Smith in the team’s glory days) for Wide Receiver coach was a ‘courtesy interview’ or there was a legitimate interest. Mularkey was emphatic that there’s no such thing as a courtesy interview and McCardell was seriously being considered (along with others) for the position.  The crowd made it’s support of McCardell known; Boselli acknowledged that if the franchise were a democracy, Keenan would be the WR coach.
• A question directed towards all three concerned whether the Jaguars would be aggressive towards acquiring offensive stand-outs in free agency as they were in (quite successfully, I may note) acquiring defensive players in the previous off-season.  Gene Smith acknowledged that he is looking to “upgrade the team’s weapons on offense”.  Mularkey was content with Smith’s answer and had nothing further to say. Khan qupped “Gene, Mike, please do that!”
• Shahid Khan enumerated a few things he is going to do to make Jacksonville the benchmark for the fan experience
  • Wireless antennas in the stadium so everyone could check on their fantasy football team without suffering slow connections.
  • An upgraded sound system for the stadium
  • More screens in the stadium.  He further added that there would be “no advertisements ” on  the screen; he noted that while he appreciates the advertisers’ support, he does not want anything to detract from the fan experience.

The owner ought to have been pleased with the turnout.  The crowd photo was taken from a few rows back, just right of center in the south end zone, looking left. The “wrap-around” crowd was equally sizable to the right.  Indeed, he seemed to be beaming throughout the event.

Happy to be here

Robinson was forced to leave, but the belief that the Seminoles could hold their own against the ACC elite remained. The following year, FSU again beat Duke at home, while 2004 featured a home win against the Tar Heels. Another home defeat of #1 Duke took place in 2006.   Neither team  came to Tallahassee in 2007, but the ‘Noles beat Duke in Cameron Indoor for good measure.  Mind you, these were all teams that fared no better than the NIT quarter-finals in the post-season, none qualified for the NCAA tournament. FSU’s 2009 tourney appearance came on the heels of defeating a Ty Lawson-less UNC in the semifinals of the ACC tournament. In 2010, FSU beat UNC on the road and 2011 featured yet another defeat of a top-ranked Duke team.

Today, Steve Robinson again manned a bench in Tallahassee. Unlike 10 years ago, though, he was on the losing side.  Unlike the aforementioned games, the result was not a close one as Florida State defeated the University of North Carolina by 33 points.

At half-time, though, it did appear it was going to be another tight game. While Florida State had a 12 point lead with six minutes to go in the first half, FSU only managed one additional point during the final stretch and held what seemed to be a precarious eight point lead given that the Tar Heels are the third ranked team in the country.

However in a four minute stretch early in the second half, Florida State turned the seemingly insecure lead into an insurmountable one.  After the Tar Heels made it a 10 point game with 18:42 remaining, the Seminoles went on a run and built a 23 point lead with with 14:33 to go.  After that, the narrowest lead for the Seminoles would be 21 points.

Deividas Dulkys was the star of the game.  While the senior guard had scored only 32 points in his past nine games, he equaled the total in today’s game.  His career high came in a performance that featured 8 of10 shooting from three point range.  The most boisterous moment for FSU (or the most soul-sucking for UNC) came with just over seven minutes left in the second half. After a Dulkys assisted lay-up, Luke Loucks stole the Tar Heels’ inbound pass and then had to wait for help to arrive.  Relief came in the form of Dulkys who converted Loucks’ pass into a three pointer.

Since that victory over Duke ten years ago, visits by the Blue Devils and Tar Heels are to Florida State basketball are what Florida State football visits were to the rest of the ACC during the glory days.  In that light, today’s game was reminiscent of the FSU-UNC football game in 2001.  The game was such a rout that watching the game in Maryland, I was unable to see the finish as ABC cut away from coverage to show a more closely contested game.  Today’s basketball game was such an energizing rout that  UNC’s coach and starters departed with 14 seconds left so that they could be out of the way of the inevitable invasion of fans.

Good thing they made that announcement about not rushing the court

Credit for photo (and caption): Matthew Farrar

Then-head coach Jack Del Rio gave Tucker greater responsibilities for running the defense and the coordinator proved the decision to be worth-while.  While the 2010 Jaguars had one of the worst defenses in the league (dead last in Defense-adjusted Value Over Average) , the 2011 edition featured one of the best (fifth in DVOA).

The improved defense came in spite of the unit being ravaged by injuries. As Peter King notedin his Week 17 Stat of the Week, the Jaguars had more players  on Injured Reserve than any other team in the past years at least, with 22 of the 31 being from the defense.  King remarked upon 12 defensive backs being on the list: “That’s almost worth an exclamation point. I’ve never heard of any position group getting ravaged like that before.”

The ability of the defensive unit to persevere and even thrive under those conditions was one of the very  few things from the 2011 Jaguars that needed to be maintained (vice needing to be improved).  The renewed presence of Tucker and several of his assistants does much to ensure that the defense does not deteriorate as the offense receives focus.

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Tania Ganguli posted on owner Shahid Khan pondering getting a Twitter account. While his son Tony Khan (@tonykhan) is active on the network, the owner has yet to register.  Shahid, though said “If there is a clamoring for (me to be on Twitter) , that look, we need that, then hey, we’ll have to do that.”

Well, I’m clamoring!

Clearly, Shahid Kahn needs to get on Twitter and do so before his moustache (@khanstache ?) does.

Tweet and they will follow

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In the course of discussing quarterback Blaine Gabbert, head coach Mike Mularkey disclosed that he had his (Atlanta Falcons) quarterbacks coach Brad Bratkowski watch film of Gabbert.  Wednesday afternoon, Frank Frangie and Rick Ballou of 1010 XL’s afternoon sports talk program immediately jumped on the disclosure as an indication that Bratkwoski was going to become the Jaguars offensive coordinator. Amusingly, the next afternoon, amidst a report that Brian Schottenheimer was in consideration for the position, Frangie and Ballou backed off, saying that they were “just speculating”.  They ought have stuck to their original assessment as Bratkwoski  spent yesterday driving to Jacksonville so that he could sign his contract.

With the coordinators in place, the next important  event will be the hiring of a quarterbacks coach; there are hints that it will be someone Bratkowski has worked with before.

After that, the cherished off-season personnel acquisition speculation will begin.

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On Tuesday, Shahid Khan and Mike Mularkey will face the fans at the “Ready to Rise Rally“. Your correspondent will be in attendance.

No, Mike Florio ** , ye whose website never misses an opportunity to bash Jacksonville, Shahid Khan’s remarks during the Mike Mularkey press conference yesterday were not

 a candid effort to hinge the privilege of following Khan’s team upon the giving of a large chunk of money to Khan’s team on an annual basis.

The comments that Florio remarks upon begin at the 15:30 minute mark of the video and start off with the need for Jaguars fans to get to know Mike Mularkey the way that  Kahn and Gene Smith know Mike (bold-face indicating the ‘controversial’ statement)

We have an event next week; we are going to have a lot of events for the  fans to come out and meet Mike. And  uh, really, uh, get to know him, frankly.  But the bottom line is and  you know, I think I can clarify this point ,  for me a fan is someone who is a season ticket holder for the Jaguars. (press chuckles) so uh that is a key definition we need to get out.

If Mr. Khan’s definition of a fan were as strict as Florio supposes it to be, the event for fans next week that Khan mentioned would be restricted to season ticket holders. It is not. The Ready to Rise Rally is open to the public at large.  As the media’s chuckles indicates, it was a tongue-in-cheek remark, not one to be taken seriously.

** Over the course of the season, the Rumor Mill has treated it a routine course of events for the home games of teams not named “Jacksonville Jaguars” to be blacked out or for such teams to offer tickets on a buy one get one free basis. However, anytime a Jacksonville game came near to be being blacked out, the Rumor Mill would report  the news in a manner such that it seemed to be an event so horrible that moving vans were on the verge of starting their engines to take the Jaguars  to the western terminus of Interstate 10.

Already knowing how the early morning host of 1010 XL’s program felt about Mularkey, I tuned into 930 AM’s Tom McManus. I was surprised by the ferocity opposition to the Jaguars’ choice.  His rant, though, seemed more focused on past choices rather than the particular decision to hire Mularkey. As such, it was rather pointless.  Before the end of the season, the Jaguars organization retained Gene Smith as General Manager. An apprent consequence of that is the decision to continue to consider Blaine Gabbert as the team’s primary quarterback**.  Those two decisions were fixed before the serious search for a head coach began.  As such, an intial consideration of the hiring of Mularkey should take those as givens.  McManus, however, chose to rage about the past rather than consider the truth of the present.

Since I was listening to 930, I did not hear the reaction on 1010.  However, I had listened the past two mornings and heard the host rule out Mularkey based on the Falcons’ poor offensive showing against the New York Giants on Sunday.  That point was raised to ESPN’s Chris Mortenson on Twitter, who replied that  Mike McCarthy’s  offense in San Francisco was 31st in the league when Green Bay hired him.  Presumably, 49er fans felt the same way that Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Mark Bradley feels about the Jaguars hiring Mularkey; he considers the Falcons lucky to have Mularkey taken off their hands. 

Another element of McManus’ complaint about the hire is that it was “another wait and see deal… oh well let’s wait and see” (spoken such that one could hear his eyes rolling). Realistically, that is true of  any hire.   No matter how great any coach’s prior sucess is, one cannot assume it to carry over to a new and possibly quite different situation.  The matter of Super Bowl coaches not winning another Super Bowl with a new team should make that clear. 

The next matter of buisness for Jaguars fans is to see whether Mel Tucker, who had been in the running for the head coach position, will remain.  There have been some hints that his remaining may have been a pre-condition as well in the head coach search.  However, the Minnesota Vikings have expressed interest in bringing him aboard, so it may not be so much a matter of the Jaguars  wanting to keep him as Tucker wanting to stay. We shall wait and see.

“Statistically, we know those are the people who maybe did it once, but I don’t think anybody’s done it twice with another team”

The hosts commented t that they think Khan  might have a point, but implied that they weren’t sure whether he was correct.  **

I was about to research this for myself, but broke off the effort when I discovered Yahoo Sports’ Jason Cole’s article from earlier this season in which he reveals that “none of the 12 men who have tried have won a Super Bowl title with a second team“. ***

Looking for a winner

So, the mustachioed owner is essentially correct.  History indicates that owners who bring in Super-Bowl winning coaches with hopes of the coach repeating their old success end up disappointed.

That is not to say, of course, that coaches with a high level of achievement in their first coaching jobs do not win the Super Bowl with other teams later on.  Jon Gruden, Tony Dungy, and Tom Coughlin all came up just short in their rookie efforts, but won the big prize with their second team.  The question which elicited the comment, though, was apparently about Super Bowl winning coaches, specifically.

** As a person who cannot stand trying to remember or fact-check an easily verifiable nugget of information without performing a quick online search,  it’s quite frustrating the number of times the hosts will say “I think” , “Maybe”, “Do you remember… I don’t know” on things that are essential to the conversation they are having without actually looking it up.   One can understand not stopping the flow of conversation to look something up, but it does seem odd for something to be guessed upon before a commercial break and still being wondered about thereafter when that something could have been very easily and quickly checked online.

***Bill Parcells,Jimmy  Johnson, Mike Ditka, Mike Holmgren, Don McCafferty, Joe Gibbs, Mike Shanahan, Hank Stram, Dick Vermeil, George Seifert, Tom Flores and Vince Lombardi

Starting the season with an unaccomplished group of wide receivers ** and making a panic switch to a rookie quarterback in week two put an enormous amount of pressure on Mo-Jo, but he answered the call.  His least productive week of the season was the eighth one, at Houston, where he gained a mere 63 yards and a touchdown.  As Chris Johnson would attest, that was pretty good for a bad day.   In weeks 12 and 13, Jones-Drew was also the team’s leading receiver; in the latter.  While he did not drop the ball figuratively, he only did so once literally; a model of reliability.

The 2006 draft was a rare good one for the Jags as it not only the one in which Mo-Jo, was drafted,  but it was also the one that brought Marcedes Lewis to the team. Incredibly, in retrospect, it was Jones-Drew who was the second-round pick.  Even though he was sharing running duties with Fred Taylor his first three seasons, he still managed to be 25th in rushing yardage his first three seasons ***.  Since becoming the primary back, he has been in the top five for rushing yardage each season. Not bad for someone who was said to lack “ideal size, which likely will prevent him from ever emerging as a load-carrier in the NFL“.

The little engine who could

That quote is a gem from the 2006 draft, a review of which shows Mo-Jo outperforming all running backs who were drafted ahead of him.  LenDale White and Laurence Maroney are out of the league. Joseph Addai and DeAngelo Williams remain with the teams who drafted them, but their output has dropped markedly from peak performance.  Reggie Bush,  like Jones-Drew, had a career season for yardage in 2011. Unlike Drew, it was his first notable season as a runner.

Let us take a moment, then, to appreciate the superior performance of Maurice Jones-Drew. And hope that help is on the way.  At risk of appearing as foolish as the anonymous draft commentator quoted above, I will hazard that Mo-Jo will not be able to carry he load for much longer.

** Realize that the Jaguars have not had a receiver finish in the top 30 in yardage since Jimmy Smith finished 18th in 2005.  Their top wide receiver going into this season, Mike Thomas, was 32nd in yardage in 2010 and there was no one to speak of behind him.  When injury kept him out of the week 15 game at Atlanta,  the Jaguars played Jarett Dillard, Chastin West, and Taylor Price. In week 1, West was on the Packers’ practice squad, while Dillard and Price were inactive for the Jaguars and Patriots, respectively. Mo-Jo’s 112 yards on the ground were not nearly enough to save the day. Maybe they should have thrown to him more (he was only targeted once in that game). Anyhow, the chicken-egg debate over whether Blaine Gabbert’s poor performance as quarterback was caused by the lack of quality wide receivers will be a key one in the off-season.

• Jimbo Fisher and Florida State football   Happy days were here again…until there were five minutes left in the Oklahoma game.  A loss in a game anticipated unlike any other in years was followed by a disappointing, yet understandable given the circumstances, loss to Clemson. That, in turn, was followed by an incomprehensible loss to Wake Forest.   The season-salvaging effort proceeded acceptably until the Seminoles lost at home to UVA, thereby setting off another whole round of angst of whether Fisher will ever be able to return FSU to greatness.  The angst boiled again during the first half of the Champs Sports Bowl, only to simmer down as the ‘Noles improbably rallied to defeat Notre Dame.  The win, combined with the UF and Miami having an even rougher time of it than FSU, will pacify fans. Until the next loss.

• NASCAR and IndyCar  Danica Patrick becomes a full-time NASCAR driver as the sport continues to recover from the popping of a bubble.  Will Danica-mania further sour the core fans? In IndyCar, what should have been the  beginning of a rousing revitalization of the sport begins on a sombre note.  The season opens under the peculiar circumstance of the previous season’s final race being cancelled due to the in-race death of star driver Dan Wheldon.  The shadow will persist through the Indy 500 as the race will be run without its defending champion.

• The 2012 elections in Florida Early into the term of Governor Rick Scott, Democrats were salivating at the prospect of running candidates against an extremely unpopular figure.  Scott’s favorability ratings have since improved somewhat, rising from ‘Adolf Hitler’ levels to ‘Mussolini’.  In the race for the U.S. Senate seat, Bill Nelson will be called to account for votes of the sort that didn’t exist in his 2006 re-election.  In a state where everyone seems to be from somewhere else, establishment of political dynasties would seem unlikely. However, Connie Mack IV may be in position to regain the seat held by his father until 2001.

• The new era of the Jacksonville Jaguars Will Shahid Khan bring forth the sort of common-sense popular changes to the team that are common to owners who come from a self-made business background, thereby keeping NFL football in Jacksonville?  Or will he merely do enough to keep the team in existence and bide his time until he moves the team to Los Angeles or St. Louis?  While we may get some clues very quickly, the rumors of a team move have persisted for a decade without any indication of a final resolution.

• The 2012 hurricane season and “the Wilma streak”. Hurricane Wilma remains the last hurricane to make landfall in Florida. The dearth of landfalls in the state continues to confound a resolution of the debate over whether Florida’s hurricane history should be considered as active with abnormal periods of quiet or vice versa.  Wilma also remains the last hurricane to make landfall in the United States at category 3 level.  There will, of course, be another major landfalling hurricane in the United States in the future, but we cannot guarantee when. At one point, it seemed certain that Irene would be the streak-buster, but it was not to be.

• Writing Although poor planning caused me to renege on a couple of promises to do so, I will write about a few games for the 800 Games Project. **  Also, the above subjects will be commented upon in this space over the course of the year.    While the promise of renewed writing has oft been unfulfilled, that will note be the case in 2012.  The new-found desire *** to write will persist.

** Peculiar scheduling has also played a part in not taking the plunge. Both the Jacksonville University at FSU and Princeton at FSU games would have been natural debut pieces, had they been played on a Saturday( rather than Friday). The Princeton game would have been especially poetic, since it was at that school that I first took in a college basketball game.

*** Reading The Language Wars has played a major part in rekindling my desire to be a producer of the written word.

The Web site NewsLibrary.com is a searchable database of millions of news accounts — mostly newspaper and magazine articles, but also some sources like television transcripts. While it lacks representation of things like blogs and social media, it contains a highly comprehensive sample of what we might think of as the traditional media.

It’s easy enough to conduct a series of searches on NewsLibrary.com in order to determine how much press coverage past Atlantic hurricanes have received. The only tricky part is that the further you go back in time, the fewer sources the database has available, so we’ll have to adjust for this.

We’ll accomplish this by creating a statistic which I’ll call the News Unit (or NU). This is defined by taking the total number of stories that mentioned the storm by name (for instance, “Hurricane Hugo” or “Tropical Storm Hugo”; either one is considered acceptable) and dividing by the average number of stories per day that were available in the NewsLibrary.com database during that period. I then multiply the result by 10 just to make things a little bit more legible — so essentially, a News Unit consists of one-tenth of all the stories published on a given day.

For instance, there were 13,326 stories published that used the term “Hurricane Gustav” or “Tropical Storm Gustav” during the period when that storm was active, from Aug. 25 through Sept. 4, 2008. And on average, there were 56,200 stories published per day during that period in the NewsLibrary.com database. Dividing 13,326 by 56,200, and then multiplying by 10, gives a result of 2.37. So Gustav produced 2.37 News Units worth of coverage while the storm was active.

The outcome is surprising. By his reckoning, Hurricane Ivan of 2004 had the greatest proportion of coverage, followed by 1992′s Andrew.  Katrina is number 14 on the list, with Wilma and Rita of that year coming in 12th and 4th, respectively.

Must have had a good press agent

-  As Katrina’s last advisory was written on the morning of Tuesday August 30, the bulk of Katrina coverage had yet to be published, as the storms ultimate impact had yet to be realized.  I haven’t studied any accounting for the deaths attributed to Katrina,  but I would think it reasonable to estimate that more than 50% of the people who comprised the storm’s death toll were still alive at that point. If Silver’s ranking of the storm is accurate, it shows that Katrina was phenomenally under-covered in the run-up to landfall.

- I’m curious to what the cut-off date was for Ivan coverage.  Recall that advisories on Ivan ended within 24 hours of landfall (September 16) . However, a circulation was clearly evident afterwards and that circulation wound its way back to the Gulf of Mexico (track), causing the National Hurricane Center resumed advisories six days later. Ivan ultimately dissipated on September 24.  If Silver used the latter date, then Ivan’s numbers are certainly inflated.  as “Ivan” would of been mentioned in numerous stories about Hurricane Jeanne, which was bearing down on Florida during the tail end of Ivan’s “second” life.

- Similarly, Andrew’s numbers are helped by the storm continuing from south Florida to a second landfall in Louisiana, two days later (and ultimate disspation two days after that), thereby gaining more post-storm coverage.  Given this boost, it is probably fair to say that Andrew was also under-covered pre-landfall, given its ultimate impact.

- A commenter expressed skepticism that Rita had more coverage than Katrina. That, given the methodology that restricts the most memorable parts of Katrina coverage, is actually unsurprising to me.  Rita was the first great storm after Katrina, and accordingly got more coverage than it would have pre-Katrina.  The massive evacuation was a big story pre-landfall, with the deaths in the bus explosion being a heavily covered story.

RECORD EVENT REPORT

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE TALLAHASSEE FL

327 PM EDT WED JUN 15 2011

…NEW ALL TIME RECORD HIGH TEMPERATURE SET FOR TALLAHASSEE… AT 307 PM EDT…THE TALLAHASSEE REGIONAL AIRPORT RECORDED A HIGH TEMPERATURE OF 105 DEGREES. THIS TEMPERATURE BREAKS THE PREVIOUS ALL TIME HIGH TEMPERATURE RECORD FOR TALLAHASSEE…WHICH WAS 104 DEGREES SET MOST RECENTLY ON JUNE 20TH 1933. THE PERIOD OF RECORD FOR TALLAHASSEE DATES BACK TO 1892.

NEEDLESS TO SAY…THIS ALSO ESTABLISHES A RECORD HIGH TEMPERATURE FOR THIS DATE…JUNE 15TH.

TEMPERATURES MAY CLIMB FURTHER THIS AFTERNOON…AND IF THE TEMPERATURE EXCEEDS THE NEW ALL TIME RECORD OF 105…THIS RECORD EVENT REPORT WILL BE UPDATED.

$$ GODSEY