Jonez on Jonez: Gus Bradley should’ve never gotten on the Jaguars’ plane

Dragonfly Jonez is a full time tweeter, a part time podcaster and an aficionado of spicy Popeye’s drumsticks who will be offering NFL commentary this season.

Football is a sport that is inundated with clichés. However, one cliché always rings true in this competition of modern-day gladiators and ever escalating battle of wits: life comes at you fast.

Football is a sport that moves at warp speed. The average NFL career lasts 3 seasons. The average tenure for NFL coaches is roughly the same. It’s a profession where the workers in hard hats and the supervisors in headsets experience turnover at the same rate. Any play can be your last. Any loss can be your last day at the office.

In the past few days in the NFL, we’ve seen two coaches get canned, a division leader make a change at quarterback (if you want to call the AFC South a division), and the playoff hopes of the reigning Super Bowl champion all but extinguished. Life comes at you fast in the NFL, and it doesn’t give a shit if it uses a Tom Savage comeback or Kyle Shanahan orchestrating a 42-14 ass whupping on your home field to do it.

In the NFL, life coming at you is analogous to the blind side blitzer that you never saw coming who fucks your whole world up. And it will have you taking your pictures out of your locker or off of your desk and packing your shit in an empty printing paper box before you even knew what hit you.

Jaguars 20, Texans 21

Life didn’t necessarily come fast at Gus Bradley. His firing has been a few seasons in the making. However, getting fired immediately after a road division game where you gave up a 12-point lead to a Tom Savage quarterbacked team and flying back with your now former co-workers is about as shitty of an ending as one can imagine.

To repeat: There is absolutely no way in hell I would have gotten on that plane if I was Gus Bradley.

I’ve been fired before. And the absolute last thing I wanted to do after being fired was be around the people who knew I had gotten fired. I still duck former co-workers from years ago when I see them out and about to this very day. I am the Arya Stark of avoiding former co-workers in public. I have hopped in the freezer at Wal-Mart and impersonated a bag of Pizza Rolls to avoid a former co-worker before.

I can’t decide if Khan is gracious or a sadist for imploring Bradley to fly back with the team he no longer coaches. But he spent $760 million on the Jaguars, so he more than likely is the latter.

There’s a lesson to be learned from the Brock Osweiler experience.

We see this play out every draft with quarterbacks. Some 6’6 schmuck who can’t hit the broad side of a barn moves up on draft boards because scouts hear the Six Million Dollar Man sound effect when they see his throwing motion and he can palm a pumpkin. Seems lots of scouts and GMs prioritize quarterbacks looking the part over their actual play. They are more concerned with how well a quarterback can wear a suit than what he can do in pads.

Granted evaluating college players, especially quarterbacks, is no easy task. It’s an inexact science. That shit is hard. There’s only about half a dozen people on the planet who are really good at being NFL quarterbacks.

But with Osweiler the red flags were there. I personally would have been extremely reluctant about entrusting a guy who has a tattoo with a glaring grammatical error to excel at the most cerebral position in all of sports. But hey ... he’s 6’7.

Buccaneers 20, Cowboys 26

On the other end of the quarterback evaluation spectrum we have Dak Prescott. After a two game slump, Dak got back on track with that whole “exceeding expectations” thing he’s been doing this season.

Saying Dak had a Russell Wilson game is by no means an insult. The kid makes great decisions. Dallas is actually doing a smart football thing (which is still unfathomable to me) by bringing him along at this pace where the game plan leans on the run and doesn’t ask Dak to make a bunch of 30 yard throws.

I do have my doubts about how this will hold up in the playoffs however. The slate of possible NFC playoff quarterbacks is Rodgers, Stafford, Eli, Ryan and Cousins. Granted all of these guys except Rodgers are dorks who are probably into Dungeons and Dragons and annoy everyone by talking like Yoda for weeks on end. But: they can all put up 350 yards and three touchdowns on any given Sunday (cliché! I know!).

Dallas’ game plan of controlling the clock and running the ball is extremely effective. I’m just not sure how effective it will be if Dallas goes down 14 and needs Dak to air that shit out. I’m very much looking forward to the players of whatever team eliminates Dallas doing Zeke's eating celebration on the Cowboys’ field.

Get the meme machines ready. It’s going to be a hoot.

Until next week, internet friends.