The Jaguars return from their bye to face the Raiders this week and coach Mike Mularkey outlined one of the changes he wants to see from his 1-4 team.
Mularkey wants to see more scrambling from quarterback Blaine Gabbert, who has run 13 times for 42 yards in the first five games of the season. The coach doesn’t just want to see Gabbert running downfield when he scrambles, however. He also wants the quarterback to make plays with his arm outside of the pocket and said that the team will be working on it in practice in hopes of seeing it happen during games.
Either quarterbacks scramble to throw or a quarterback can scramble to run. Sometimes, you’ve just got to tell them even in practice out there, to run. Even in a seven-on-seven period we want him to scramble to throw or run,” Mularkey said, via Vito Stellino of the Florida Times-Union. “We want to simulate a game as much as we can in practice, even in seven-on-seven. There are times to run so I would not discourage him from doing that. We’re trying to promote it a little more.”
The Jaguars might like the direction, but there hasn’t been a clear improvement in Gabbert’s play. The team ranks last in the league in net yards per passing attempt at 4.4, which is only an incremental increase over last year’s league-worst figure of 4.2. Given the way things have been working, there’s not much downside to having Gabbert try different ways to make plays.