Losses don’t really get more disappointing than Sunday’s was for Jacksonville. The team was excited to show that it’s entering a new era, but instead, we just saw more of the same as the Jaguars were run out of NRG Stadium by the Houston Texans.
The 37-21 loss caused a lot of re-evaluation of this team’s offseason improvement, and this could very well be another difficult season in Jacksonville. But starting cornerback Shaquill Griffin says that the team’s leaders aren’t going to let that happen.
Griffin said he spent a lot of time after the game talking with safety Rayshawn Jenkins, a fellow team captain, and offseason acquisition, about how to improve and keep the team focused.
“I definitely feel a lot better after the game after watching it, seeing what we did good, seeing things we have to work on,” Griffin said. “I feel like me and Rayshawn [Jenkins] probably had the longest talk about the game after watching it on the plane. I feel like guys like us, you talk about the second play of the game, I have to make that play. [It’s] something I have to work on. The play with Rayshawn, have to bring those in. It’s little details like that that we have to fix, but I think the biggest thing we took from that game is that first series, the energy, the way we started it off, the passion, you can feel it, you can see it.
“That’s the part that we have to kind of continue throughout the whole game. I feel like that’s the biggest thing. One more thing about the game that we learned was let’s find a way not to get frustrated with how the game is going, but focus on completing each task, each play, one play at a time. We can’t kind of figure out what the offense may do each game, but we can control what the defense does each play.”
Looking beyond the secondary and at the team in general, Griffin said the captains have put a lot of emphasis on keeping the team motivated through the struggles. He said that it has been apparent in practice this week that the approach is working.
“It’s tough, but now you have the captains who’ve seen it before, been through winning teams, know how it feels to lose games, and how to get prepared for the next one to continue to try to get better so you don’t lose another one,” he said. “It’s critical for the captains to do a lot more, speak up a lot more. I feel like that’s what a lot of our captains are good at is speaking up and just giving guys hope. That’s the main thing, you have to believe in something that’s bigger than yourself and it takes the captains to continue to show the way, doing everything right, being that leader on and off the field. That’s the part we continue to preach as captains, and I feel like every day we try to come up with something new to try to figure out how to do better, how to get guys to continue to believe.
“Right now, just off today’s practice, I can see the spirit’s still there.”
Though the Week 1 loss was certainly disappointing, there’s a lot of football left to be played this season, and with the Texans being the only victorious AFC South team in Week 1, there is still no clear pecking order within the division. The Jags will need to stay focused to avoid tilting in the coming weeks.