Press Taylor Gives His Early Takes on the Jaguars’ Offense
Brett Hawn
With minicamps on the horizon, incremental strides have been made thus far between Jacksonville Jaguars first-year offensive coordinator Press Taylor and a litany of new starters on that side of the ball. Building chemistry and incorporating a new scheme requires an entire offseason of work, but Taylor has been impressed thus far by the offense's progress.
“I think we got a lot done,” Taylor said. “We got a lot put in, a lot installed. We got a chance to teach really the foundation of what we want to do as an offense and then teach a lot of technique. We’re asking guys to do things a certain way. Whether they’ve done that [technique with other teams], whether they haven’t, we don’t know. But here’s how we envision it being done, here’s what we like, go out, do it, now let’s talk about it, let’s coach it.
"So, I think from that standpoint, we got a lot done and we were able to kind of sell that vision to the guys of what we want it to look like. They were able to go out there, have success doing it, work through some things, and then we all kind of bounce ideas off one another moving forward. We’d like it done this way, a guy says they haven’t done it this way, had success, can do it, can verbalize it, can show you video evidence, things like that, so there’s been a lot of good back and forth with the guys building this thing.”
These principles have served as a blueprint for Taylor to assess how he wants the offense to run and what are potential strengths and weaknesses. At this point in the offseason program, Taylor knows what the personality of this offense is going to be based on what has been installed thus far.
“I think so, I really do,” Taylor said. “I feel good about the way we’re able to go about it and get, I don’t know if I could put a percentage on it. Obviously, things, there’s an ebb and a flow throughout the season of we thought we were going to be good at something moving forward. Turns out, week 8, that hasn’t really been our thing, let’s start to pivot this way.
"I think that’s just kind of ebb and flow of a season where teams evolve as the season goes and guys are in, guys are out, you’re playing this team, that team, you kind of feature different things. But we feel like we got a lot of offense in, at least what we wanted to accomplish. Probably we were able to add kind of some bells and whistles and try to mess with guys and stress them a little bit with the mental aspect of learning the system and guys were really receptive to that.”
In the wake of last season’s circus, the offensive focus so far this offseason has been focused on setting the foundation upon which to build. The most important aspect mentally is to move forward and not dwell on past events. The team’s approach this offseason is a telling sign that they are ready to embrace the path to improvement.
“I think guys have just done a great job of trying to learn who’s here and what we’re asking them to do,” Taylor said. “We haven’t really dug into a lot of what went on here in the past. That’s not really our concern right now. It’s more of getting what we want to get accomplished today and moving forward with this thing.”