After retirement, players from the NFL often reflect on some of the things they could’ve done better, even those who were successful. With him retiring in 2015, Maurice Jones-Drew has had five years to look back on his career in which he saw great individual success, but not a lot of team success.
In an article where NFL Network asked several of it’s analysts about their biggest regrets, Jones-Drew stated that he wished he would’ve taken a better offseason approach as a player. Like many players, he spent some of his offseason training away from the Jags facility, but when looking back on it, he’s come to realize that maybe he could’ve built a better bond with his teammates by being present.
Training together and building team chemistry is such a big part of high school and college football, and that’s exactly what I experienced at De La Salle and UCLA. When I stepped into a leadership role in Jacksonville, I should have encouraged my teammates to train together in the offseason rather than going our separate ways. There were several seasons where we were one or two games out of the playoffs and — who knows? — we might’ve been in the mix had we been pushing each other all spring and summer. I was one of the people who left Jacksonville in the offseason, and although I was improving my own game, how could I lead by not being present? I couldn’t.
He makes a good point. For players on the high school level, it’s heavily stressed that players participate in preseason workouts because it helps a group of young people build chemistry well before they take the field. The same could be said about college football.
During his career (2006-13), the Jags only had three winning seasons and Jones-Drew only saw the playoffs once (2007). As he stated, there were some seasons where the Jags were .500 or close like 2009 (7-9) and 2010 (8-8) that could’ve evolved into something better, but now we’ll never know. The good thing about it is that Jones-Drew has been able to at least admit his mistake and can now pass down that knowledge to some of the current Jags and others.
Listen to the latest from Jags Wire’s own James Johnson and Phil Smith on their podcast “Bleav in the Jags.” Subscribe via Apple Podcasts and check out our archived episodes via Bleav Podcasts.
[protected-iframe id=”37079217cb57585e7771bd52ecab7b00-105974738-159322853″ info=”https://art19.com/shows/bleav-in-the-jacksonville-jaguars/episodes/385e4be6-aeec-4bd7-bf98-a53f2e681f90/embed” scrolling=”no”]