6 extremely football related questions with Big Cat Country

Who can you pin the blame on for Jacksonville’s 2-8 start? What does the present and future look like at quarterback for the Jaguars? Also, hey, is the multiverse real?

As is custom when the Falcons and Jaguars meet, we swapped questions with Ryan Day at Big Cat Country. To say we covered a lot of ground would be an understatement, so rad on for insights into the Jaguars and the very nature of the universe itself.

Dave Choate: Who is the single person most at fault for your franchise’s failure this season?

Ryan Day: It’s Shad Khan. It has to be. As boring and simple and cliche as it sounds...he’s the guy at the top and it all runs through him.

Now, the real question is, who am I more mad at this year? That’s unequivocally Urban Meyer. The dude started his tenure with sleeping through free agency and hiring a racist strength coach. Then he let his No. 1 overall draft pick get into a quarterback competition with Gardner Minshew during training camp, delaying Trevor Lawrence’s offseason development for... reasons??? And then there was The Incident which I never want to speak of again because eww. The team lacks focus and a clear plan on game days and he is doing everything he can to shoulder unnecessary burdens on the rookie quarterback’s shoulders.

Shad Khan is at fault, but everyone wanted Urban Meyer as their coach. He finally swung for the fences and paired it with a generational talent at quarterback. He’s at fault, but I’m not really that mad at him. Urban Meyer is the focus of all my rage and I pray for his disintegration everyday

Dave Choate: Do you believe in parallel universes / a multiverse?

Ryan Day: Hmmm, I don’t think so. I think a multiverse would cheapen our actions (and consequences) in each different reality. Think about it — if there’s only one of us, then every action we’ve taken is concrete and there is no do-over. But if every action branched out into the creation of an infinite number of realities, then there’s always a way out.

I regret asking this question because the larger ones — is there a God? are we intelligently designed? what happens when we die? — are a lot more interesting and (frankly) would impact my day-to-day behavior. Like, for example, if there were actually a Heaven, I’d probably have more patience with my kids or not be so judgmental to the guy who cut me off in traffic. Or if there were a God and we were all intelligently designed, then it would be a lot more reasonable to treat others the way we want to be treated, right? No one would have more value than the other. Instead, I watched End Game this afternoon and threw in a question about the multiverse. Sad.

Dave Choate: If you could give one of your team’s games to an alien race that would best help them understand your team over their history, what would it be?

Ryan Day: Jaguars vs. Patriots — January 21, 2018 — AFC Championship.

I have to believe an alien race would be smarter, more technologically advanced, and out for blood. So this quickly turns from “let’s have the aliens learn about the Jaguars” to an “I have to save the world” scenario.

If I’m to save the world from doom at the hands (or tentacles) of our alien overlords, I have to make them feel sorry for me, their lone representative from Earth. By watching that game, they would learn that this team is easily lovable but that fate is a cruel mistress and the world is out to get Jaguars fans. They would have compassion, and probably go back to their own world having discovered that they could bring no punishment to our doorstep that the Jaguars haven’t delivered 100 times over in my lifetime. Go Jaguars. Go Earth.

Dave Choate: What does the future look like for the franchise quarterback? Bright or dismal?

Ryan Day: Bright. Just about every week, Trevor Lawrence is being handed a shovel and pointed towards an un-shovel-able pile of shit. And you know what? The guy goes in there and does his job. Some weeks, he almost takes care of it by himself! The offensive line has not been good in pass protection (they rank near the bottom of the league in pressures given up), his receivers are averaging multiple drops per game, and his coaching staff won’t even try to establish any sort of run game to help him out. Put some playmakers around him and hire a competent, creative coaching staff, and he’ll be fun to watch.

Dave Choate: If you could travel back in time and warn your GM about one draft pick in particular, who would you pick and how would you gain access to his office?

Ryan Day: Blake Bortles. I hate Blake Bortles with every fiber of my being. He set our franchise back a decade. While it’s true he was having an uncharacteristically good game during that AFC Championship in Foxborough (AND MYLES JACK WASN’T DOWN DAMMIT) I would rather have not even gone and started our search for a real quarterback years earlier. The dude rode the coattails of Allen Robinson and Allen Hurns to cobble together some productive years and give us the option to sit on our hands while we fell ass-backwards into a generational defense.

But you can’t just run into Dave Caldwell’s office and say you’re from the future and expect him to believe you. Caldwell is dumb... but he’s also arrogant. Dumb with a side of arrogant, if you will. He wouldn’t listen to me. He would only listen to himself. So, I would find a recording of him from the future when he releases Bortles, or some damning critique of Bortles in his own words, and I would mail it to him. I’d then light myself on fire outside TIAA Bank Field next to the Jaguars statue with a sign that said “LISTEN TO THE TAPE, DAVE”.

It’s worth it for my daughter to live in a world where Jacksonville Jaguars QB Blake Bortles does not exist. I believe that.

Dave Choate: Let’s say you could only go backwards in time from that point. How many stops would you make before the Big Bang happened in reverse and what would be before it?

Ryan Day: I’d like to begin by saying that I don’t think I’m smart enough to make wholesale changes to historical events, so this would be a tourist trip for me. That’s not a cop out. How would I convince someone from 200 years ago I’m from the future? They’d ask me who the next President would be and I’d just stare into oblivion.

Anyway... here’s my list (from 2013 on down to the Big Bang):

1959 AD: Invention of the first silicon chip. A major technological achievement and stepping stone to the development of the Internet. I would destroy it immediately.

1594 AD: William Shakespeare’s “Taming Of The Shrew” premiere. It’s my favorite.

610 AD: Muhammad is given his first revelation. Seems important.

31 AD: Jesus makes a blind man see. I mean... wouldn’t you?

29 AD: Jesus turns water into wine. I’d drink as much as I could. I wanna get blitzed on Jesus Draft.

(If you say the crucifixion, you obviously don’t know what a crucifixion is.)

3500 BC: I want to watch how they invented the wheel. From the first guy going “there’s gotta be an easier way to do this!” to when they throw those bad guys on boxes and invent wagons. The process had to be wild.

Big Bang

Thanks to Ryan for the time and his deeply haunting answer about Blake Bortles. Go read Big Cat Country for more and we’ll see the Jaguars all too soon.