powerpaw2

So much for professionalism, huh?

Marrone is gone at the end of the season.  I sent the following letter to Mark Lamping who is the president of Jags operations….

Dear Mr. Lamping,

I was an Availability/Problem Manager for IBM on the Capital One account. It was my job to join conference calls during high severity incidents to ensure the outage was being resolved as quickly as possible.  Incidents of high severity ranged from 0 to 3 (with 0 being the worst) with severity being determined by regulatory, reputational and/or financial impact to the business.  A day or two after resolution, those on the incident call would convene to discuss ways to prevent recurrence altogether or mitigate impact should recurrence be unavoidable. 

Right now the Jags are at a severity 3 and teetering on a 2.  The fans are disgruntled which will lead to financial loss for stakeholders if things don’t change. Basically all we hear from coaches and players is “we need to do better”.  I have yet to see anyone exhibit anything close to the degree of passion that was shown by Tim Tebow after the Gators’ 2008 loss to Ole Miss. 

The offensive plays are predictable, we play a lot of zone on defense with the blitz coming once in a blue moon.  Earlier in the season CBS showed a graphic indicating Fournette gains more yards when running to the left than when the play goes up the middle or to the right.  So on first and goal in the third quarter yesterday, where does the play go?  Up the middle, exactly where the Bucs expected and Leonard was stuffed.  John DeFilippo was supposed to change up things, but all I see are the same old plays from the past few years.  Then there’s the offensive line. Yesterday I watched a pass play where Fournette stayed back to block.  He was handling his man, but the right tackle released his man to block the guy Leonard had picked up.  The result was a sack. 

I could on about penalties (especially those after the play has ended), defensive players not staying in their lane, etc, but I know you’re a busy man.  The Jags need to go into damage control mode to repair the relationship with the fans.  I propose holding a town hall where some members of the front office and coaching staff as well as players field questions from a group of 20 – 30 fans.  Of course the fans would need to be respectful in asking their questions and giving comments.  Last week I brought this up to Brent Martineau on his radio show and he liked the idea.

I lived in Jacksonville from 1977 – 87 then started coming back to visit in 1999.  The more I visited, the more I wanted to move back.  Because of family issues I didn’t make it back permanently until late 2014.  I love my town and want it to be successful in all areas including our football team. 

I sincerely hope you and the rest of the Jags’ leadership team will consider the town hall.  Perception is reality to those who watch the games then hear a few select sound bites during a newscast or sports talk radio show.  Right now it seems like the team doesn’t care.  A town hall would be an opportunity to prove otherwise.

Respectfully,

Who knows if I’ll get a reply, but we shall see.

 Evan and Sonny will get together then Paul will come to Salem.  Will will get out of jail and we’ll have the dual couple drama.  Good grief.  (Not a spoiler, but that’s what I see happening based on how they write this stuff.)