Ground Hole Saw

Jaguars lose ground on many fronts

Forget for a moment the ridiculous replay reviews that led to a four-hour game. You can even dismiss the 15-point, fourth quarter lead the Jaguars blew Saturday night in a 35-32 preseason overtime loss to the Buffalo Bills at Ralph Wilson Stadium.

The final score was mostly meaningless. What mattered is the Jaguars' first-team offense, and more so its defense, played way below par in a game that is generally regarded as the most important barometer of where an NFL team is at in its preseason development.

Despite the Bills being one of the league's worst teams, the Jaguars allowed 443 yards in total defense. More importantly, the first-team defense gave up 17 quick points in the first three series, and it would have been three touchdowns had it not been for a third-and-goal stop by linebacker Paul Posluszny at the 1-yard line.

It was ugly often in the early going. Cornerback Rashean Mathis gave up a 52-yard touchdown bomb to Steve Johnson. Posluszny, who had coverage issues when he played in Buffalo, was exposed on a 30-yard completion to running back Fred Jackson on the Bills' opening drive.

As coach Jack Del Rio correctly pointed out at halftime to TV-47's Brent Martineau, the defense made Bills starting quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick "look like Joe Montana for a little while."

The Jaguars can try and take consolation in the fact Aaron Kampman and Tyson Alualu didn't suit up, but this wasn't the New England Patriots going against the Jaguars' defense.

On the flip side, not only did Jaguars' starting quarterback David Garrard not look like a Hall of Famer, he and his unsupportive cast of receivers put themselves in a 17-0 hole with abysmal execution to start the game. The Jaguars gained all of 12 yards on the first three series, which included a critical drop by Jason Hill on a well-thrown rainbow pass near midfield.

Incredibly, the Jaguars scored 32 unanswered points to go up 32-17 early in the fourth quarter. However, the comeback was plenty misleading because Buffalo was flagged for highly suspect pass interference calls against ex-Jag Drayton Florence and cornerback Reggie Corner that kept two of Garrard's touchdown drives going. Garrard, who was 11 of 21 for 106 yards, led two of his three scoring drives against the Bills' backups.

Cameo Garrett: Kids in a Pit

Last night I was thinking about Laura Ingraham for a moment and closed my eyes and tried to focus but nothing came to mind except her climbing up a white metal or steel ladder (it was white) and I thought it was going into someplace (maybe a plane, maybe a crawlspace, I don't know). And then, totally separate thought, I saw kids in a hole in the ground. It was a hole out of the earth, and I saw at least one kid, but thought it looked like maybe more than one. The opening was small enough for me to see only one kid and the arms were raised up, but I couldn't tell. And then after this, and wondering why I saw what looked like a child or children held hostage and put in a pit, I saw a river. The river was nearby I think, to the pit or the child, but I don't know how far away and it was a rolicking river, not a quiet stream. I thought, where would she have been to have seen something like this and why do I only see the child still in the pit or hole in the ground? It was dug out of the earth. There was nothing fancy about it. And then the next thing I saw was cream or white colored slacks that went all the way to the shoes and heeled shoes or boots, also cream or white, and walking around, and I could only see from the knee to the shoe as if I were a child, looking out at ground level, from under a table, and seeing the feet immediately in front of me and then the rest of the pant leg up to about the knee. Walking back and forth. A few steps this way, a few steps that way. The river that I saw, it was rolicking, like the river that you have to cross over by bridge to go to Dryden, Washington, where my son lives. When I saw it I thought, "That looks like the Wenatchee River in Dryden. I saw from an angle of being up higher and looking at it from the Dryden side, with the river there first and then past it, the highway. It wasn't a pit that was super deep, and I was looking far down and seeing something at the bottom.

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