By Mike Bonts, Florida Sports Wire
JACKSONVILLE – The Jacksonville Jaguars opened the 2023 training camp Wednesday in a new state-of-the-art football facility and in front of fans.
Jaguars head coach Doug Pederson was eager to get the first day of training camp started.
“Brings back a lot of memories as a player and as a young head coach in this league. These
days never get old, this is why you’re in this business, for days like this,” noted Pederson in his morning news conference. “We understand it’s a long process, though. Camp is for several weeks. It’s great to get everybody on the grass and we got, what? Two beautiful fields, we’ve got a beautiful building that we’re breaking in and everybody is excited.”
On a roster note, Pederson was the club was comfortable with the pass rusgh for the upcoming season. Naming Travon Walker and Josh Allen’s continued improvement and how K’Lavon Chaisson, Roy Robertson-Harris andDaVon Hamilton ended last season.
“Our job, as coaches, is to make sure that we coach our players and that’s what we’re going to do in this camp and particularly when we get the pads on. We like the guys we have, obviously, and we’re comfortable with that. We’ll get them ready to go,” Pederson said.
Fans returned to training camp in 2023.
“Love it. I love it,” Pederson added. ” It’s the enthusiasm of playing in front of your home fans anyway. The fact that we have a beautiful stadium out here to host 2500 or so fans for the next couple of weeks. The guys feed off of that. It brings a lot of energy to practice. Sometimes, it’s better than blaring the music all day long.”
About 2,500 fans attended the Jaguars’ first training camp practice. Each position group will sign autographs after practice this year, with 100 fans getting an opportunity each day after practice.
“It was pretty cool, especially here at the new facility. We’ve got the best facility in the NFL, the best fans in the NFL, it’s cool to have. To be able to share that with the city and to have fans here, I mean we’re going to have people here pretty much every day, so we’re putting it to good use. I know everybody is excited, just the fans we’re talking about,” said quarterback Trevor Lawrence.
The Jaguars placed outside linebacker Dawuane Smoot on the Active/Physically Unable to Perform (PUP) list on Wednesday. Pederson said a healthy Smoot brings leadership to the club.
“He was another one at the end of the year before the injury that was being disruptive. Another one, obviously, in the pass rush conversation. He’s probably a little later as for coming back to the football team because of a later injury during the season. I think his leadership, his pass rush ability, the fact that he can play inside and outside, his versatility there. Those are the guys that we were hoping to get back, right? One of the free agents on the team we were trying to resign, and we were excited that we did.”
Training camp continues Thursday.
(Florida Sports Wire Photo by Nancy DeLander Beecher/SportsDay Images)
