Jacksonville Jaguars head coach Mike Mularkey wanted to make sure everyone knows who the current starting quarterback is and that there won’t be a competition during this year’s training camp.
Mularkey has stated that they’ll be going with second year signal caller Blaine Gabbert.
“No, it’s not (a competition). Blaine’s our starting quarterback.”
Mularkey has been impressed with how well Gabbert has handled the negativity that’s been following him after a bad rookie season in 2011.
“I give him credit for handling the negativity — I haven’t seen it affect him,” Mularkey said. “It’d be easy to go into a shell, worry about perception. He has a lot of confidence and he doesn’t let outside sources influence that. That’s hard to do in this business, especially now with all this Facebook and Twitter. There’s so much more pressure on him, but he’s been good. I’m a big body-language reader, and on the practice field, the cafeteria, in the meetings, he has a confidence about him. We feel good about him.”
Mularkey has already seen some improvement in Gabbert.
“I’ve seen improvement over the short time I’ve been with him, and (in the spring) you get coaching and teaching in a less stressful environment,” Mularkey said. “We’re working on some of the fundamentals in his drops now. Not saying that he was taught it wrong, but every coach has their beliefs. None of them are wrong, but we need to be on the same page on some of those things, and we already started working on that in April. Primarily, it’s his drops and balance in the pocket.”
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Stupid!
If your starting quarterback is the lowest rated QB in the NFL and there is no competition for the starting job, fire the GM.
If the coach declares that no matter how the players perform, he will be playing the highest paid, fire the coach.
If your QB can not perform under the stress of an expectation of performance and the threat of replacement, find another QB.