JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Not a bad day of work for the Jaguars, especially since players got to line up against some unfamiliar faces.
The Jaguars hosted their first joint practices since 2017 when the Bucs joined them in Jacksonville on Wednesday morning at the Miller Electric Center. The last time Tampa Bay came to Jacksonville for joint practice work was in 2017, a season that ended with a trip to the AFC championship game for the Jaguars. More than nostalgia, it was the perfect time for the Jaguars to see someone else other than a teammate in a teal jersey.
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It’s the first of three times this week that the Jaguars and Bucs will face off, including another joint practice Thursday morning that now has availability for fans to attend. Then, the finale on Saturday night when the teams meet at 7:30 under the lights at EverBank Stadium for the second preseason game.
“I think joint practices are good. Just to break up the monotony of camp and go against some different guys,” said defensive lineman Arik Armstead said. “Being a part of this for a lot of years, guys get tired of going against each other. So, bringing in a new team, being able to hit somebody else than your teammate.”
Some of the individual assignments were a serious test for Jacksonville players. Edge rusher Josh Hines-Allen got a chance to line up against Bucs offensive tackle Tristan Wirfs, one of the league’s best offensive linemen. There’s not a comparable tackle on the Jaguars roster who can give Hines-Allen that type of test. And with limited reps in live preseason games, a controlled joint practice session probably provides the best competition that Hines-Allen and the Jaguars rushers will see until the regular season.
“Tristan, he’s a heck of a tackle. I’ve been looking for this match-up for a minute now, getting back to last year when he played us, I think he had the best of me,” Hines-Allen said. “That’s still OK. I still had my rushes in there. But the totality of the game, I feel I could have done more. And he did a good job on working his craft.”
Ryan Nielsen is still working to fine tune his new defense with the Jaguars and, like Armstead said, loves the ability for his players to go against someone in a different jersey. The Bucs have a big-bodied veteran receiver in Mike Evans and a mobile quarterback in Baker Mayfield that the Jaguars get to see multiple times this week. Cornerback Tyson Campbell got a couple opportunities to line up against Evans on Wednesday, including a pass breakup in the end zone that would have been a touchdown had Campbell not swatted it away.
“Advantage is just hitting somebody else. Just something new. New scheme, new challenge of a different player, things like that. We didn’t do a lot of — when you play a game, there’s a lot of self-scout and things like that,” Nielsen said. “This is about us doing our job, going out and playing our fundamentals, technique, our scheme, those type of things, and we’re not scouting these guys or game-planning them, so to speak. We’re just playing our game today and just seeing what our guys can do. So, it is a good evaluation.”
Hines-Allen, the highest-paid defensive player in Jaguars history, is coming off a franchise-record 17.5 sack season. He’s getting into a groove in coordinator Nielsen’s new defense and said that he feels positioned for another big season.
“Yeah, right now I feel the best I’ve ever felt, being six years into the league. And we just got better all around me as well. But now it’s more a team, more a championship feel, more bring everybody in,” Hines-Allen said. “And once everybody is in, hold this standard to a high standard. If I can be willing to do that, bring everybody along, man, we’re going to be hunting for days, weeks, months.”