Jacksonville Jaguars @ Minnesota Vikings - Week 1 (1pm est. CBS)

and seriously tho, football is football who cares [pic]

Considering MJD and AP are most likely going to be held back greatly, I'm not sure what good football you're speaking about.

[pic] Been waiting all summer for some football Ponder will ball

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A great defensive game of football sounds good to me.

Football is football? [pic]

nicca did you not see that Jets vs Ravens game last year... Some football games are complete snorefest

Browns/Seahawks, Browns/Rams games come to mind. But football is football. Sometimes It's like having nothing but a pack of Ramen Noodles in the kitchen cupboard. You want something better but you'll still eat it anyway [pic]

Jaguars Mularkey and OC Bob Bratkowski believe in Scripting Opening Plays

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The Jaguars’ 44 first-quarter points last season were seventh-fewest in the NFL. In that group of seven, five of the teams have new starting quarterbacks and four have new head coaches compared to Week 1 last season.

The Jaguars and Indianapolis Colts are the only teams in the group with both a new coach (Chuck Pagano, Mike Mularkey) and new quarterbacks (Andrew Luck, Blaine Gabbert).

One of the ways Mularkey and offensive coordinator Bob Bratkowski hope to spark the Jaguars’ start is by scripting the first 10 to 15 plays and certain situations.

“I like players being able to know, ‘OK, here’s the first 15 plays, here’s the first third-and-10, here’s the first third-and-5,’ so they have something concrete to go and study,” Bratkowski said after practice Thursday.

Bratkowski will present the script to the offensive players Saturday night at the team hotel in Minneapolis.

From a strategic standpoint, the Jaguars can call plays to see how the Minnesota defense reacts.

“We’re showing the defense what we want to show them and we try to find out what their plan is and how they’re going play certain personnel,” Bratkowski said.

Green Bay led the NFL last season with 132 first-quarter points, followed by Atlanta (120). Mularkey was the Falcons’ offensive coordinator and Bratkowski the quarterbacks coach.

In his previous 12 seasons with the Jaguars, center Brad Meester said, “I’ve had different guys in here,” who liked to script the first set of plays.

“I do like to have an idea,” he said. “I don’t have to necessarily know the order, but it’s a good idea to know some of the initial plays so you can really rehearse them in your head. It gives you another way to kind of play the game in your head before it happens.”

The other variable to consider, especially in an opening game, is being prepared for what wrinkles the Vikings will present.

“This is my [21st ] opening day and the first thing we will tell players the night before the game is, ‘Don’t be surprised by anything,’” Bratkowski said. “I’ve had teams in a 4-3 defense all through the previous season and all the way through the preseason and then they come out in a 3-4 defense, which is a radical change. … The biggest thing is after those series are over and you see what’s different, you talk it through and it’s not going to be anything we can’t handle, but it’s going to be something we’ll need to communicate about.”

But it works both ways, right? The Jaguars could have something up their collective sleeve? “Oh yeah,” Bratkowski said. “Ohhhh yeah.”

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Peterson: Without MJD, Jaguars are terrible

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It’s too bad for Maurice Jones-Drew that Adrian Peterson isn’t running the Jaguars front office.

If he was, Jones-Drew might not have had to held out a month for nothing.

When the Vikings running back was discussing his Jaguars counterpart, he made it clear how much he respects Jones-Drew’s ability.

“Look at Jones-Drew,” Peterson said, via Judd Zulgad of 1500ESPN.com. “He was their whole offense last year. So, without him, the Jaguars are terrible just to be honest.”

It’s almost hard to imagine the Jags being worse than their 5-11 mess last year, but I suppose it’s possible.

For his part, Jones-Drew said he was rooting for Peterson to recover from his knee problems, showing running back solidarity.

“I’ve always been watching, seeing how things are going, hoping and wishing him well,” Jones-Drew said. “Obviously as running backs we have to stick together because everybody is trying to devalue us or say, ‘We’re not this or we’re not that,’ which is pretty funny.

“He’s coming back off something tough. I think we have all in some way or another experienced this type of adversity and the type of guy he is he’s going to be able to get through that and be able to make plays. Hopefully, we’ll be able to see him on Sunday. I can’t wait to see how he looks.”

Between Jones-Drew’s month off which will have him coming off the bench, and Peterson’s health, what should have been a matchup of two of the league’s elite runners may be little more than a footnote Sunday.

But they’ve got each other’s back.

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AP delivering that ether/bulletin board material. Might not be smart to call out the team you probably won't even play against and if you do, in a marginal role.

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You need two great defensive teams for that to happen [pic]

This is the least sought after game of the week, quit kidding yourself.

Dissing your opponent before the game usually don't end well though. He better hope if he gets the ball the defense don't go straight for that knee after his comments. That'd be !!ed up, but once you call a team terrible, all bets are off.

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We'll see how it plays out.

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