What a difference a year makes.
After a 3-14 season in 2021 that earned the Jacksonville Jaguars the No. 1 pick in the NFL Draft for a second consecutive season, the new and improved Jaguars are now AFC South champions.
Leading the way in Jacksonville is head coach Doug Pederson, who inherited a team picking up the pieces left by Urban Meyer’s disastrous tenure as coach.
Meyer was fired after only 13 games and two wins amid a myriad of scandals. Were the Jaguars a broken team after all of that? Not according to veteran wide receiver Marvin Jones Jr.
Marvin Jones on the notion the #Jaguars were broken after last year with Urban Meyer.
"I think one person was broken. It wasn't us," he said.
— Jeremy Fowler (@JFowlerESPN) January 8, 2023
Jaguars players have mostly tried not to discuss the Meyer tenure. Perhaps most affected by the mess was quarterback Trevor Lawrence, who led the NFL in interceptions as a rookie. While Lawrence hasn’t talked much in the last year about his opinion of Meyer, Jones hasn’t been afraid to speak his mind.
In October, Jones said on a podcast that it was only the second week of training camp when he knew a disaster was brewing. Jones told Mike Silver on that podcast that Meyer lied about “pretty much everything.”
Jones, 32, finished the 2022 regular season with 46 receptions, 529 yards, and three touchdowns.