“If you ain’t first, you’re last.”
–Ricky Bobby
The Jacksonville Jaguars, your American Football Conference South Division Champions, have had a relatively quiet off-season. In recent years the Jags have typically been one of the more active teams in the off-season while attempting to fill the many gaps along a losing roster. But, with our “generational QB” and Super Bowl champion coach leading the team to a division title and a historical playoff win, the roster doesn’t seem to have any immediate glaring needs that need to be addressed. The Jags are now in a position where they can build the depth chart in a more methodical manner instead of scrambling to overpay free agents in the opening days of free agency.
With a solid foundation in the roster and another division title in the Jags’ sights, the Jaguar’s facilities have dominated the headlines starting when they unveiled plans for the “Stadium of the Future”. Instead of building a new stadium at a new site, the city of Jacksonville and the Jaguars organization have decided to make significant upgrades to the current stadium to the tune of around $2 billion which includes development around the stadium. Jaguars president Mark Lamping said, “constructing an entirely new stadium, whether that’s on the current site or somewhere else in the Jacksonville area, would cost an additional $1 billion.” The Jags haven’t said what they could do with that saved $1 billion but maybe not add another dog park or anymore more pools to the stadium.
With the proposed stadium upgrade, the Jaguars are faced with another issue, where do they play while the stadium is being worked on? The organization estimated that if they played at the stadium during the construction, it could take around 4 years to complete as well as an additional $190 million. The other option is to find another location to play and they cut the renovation in half to 2 years. There currently aren’t any viable options in northeast Florida outside of the triple a baseball stadium or the University of North Florida Stadium but the Jags would have to pony up “$125 million to add 20,000 seats to either facility to get them NFL-ready”, according to Lamping. The Jags have had talks with several venues including the University of Florida Ben Hill Griffin Stadium which sits about 74 miles away from TIAA Bank Field. Another venue the Jags have had conversations with is the Daytona International Speedway which is a straight shot down Interstate 95 at around 91 miles. There have been talks with the people over at Camping World Stadium but I think most Jags fans would rather watch their team play on the streets of I10 before driving down the I4 corridor. With a team that has Super Bowl aspirations in the near future, let’s hope we can get this stadium finished sooner rather than later.
The other facility that has taken up the news headlines is the Jaguar’s new training facility, the Miller Electric Center. According to the team website, “the two-story facility includes an indoor practice field, two outdoor practice fields, fan amenity areas, offices, and meeting rooms.” This allows the players, coaches, and personnel to have a state-of-the-art facility year-round that isn’t the game day stadium. “It makes it easier when you can just step right out on the two beautiful practice fields,” Pederson said. “You got a great indoor facility over there and you can get a lot more work done.” Last year the team held training camp at a local high school where they traveled to each day. “Last year was great at Episcopal, having those two fields like that during camp, but now we don’t have to travel,” Pederson said. “[Now] we can just step right out onto the grass. Everything is accessible and it just makes it a little bit easier to move around when you have a 91-man roster like we do.”
As exciting as it is to see a team make headline moves in the off-season, I think the Jags are happy to focus on building on the special season they had last year. As the bottom of the division rivals, Houston Texans are going to find out, “winning” the off-season is not a good thing. Myles Jack wasn’t down.
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