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Bracing for the Meadowlands Cold wave may help Jaguars prepare for Jets game
Posted: Tuesday January 05, 1999 12:46 PM
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) -- When the Jacksonville Jaguars woke up and stepped outside Tuesday, they could feel the wind and see their own breath. Sort of like the Meadowlands without all the Astroturf. Or the 75,000 screaming fans. A cold front hit north Florida at just the right time to help the Jaguars prepare for their first cold-weather game of the season, Sunday at the New York Jets in a second-round playoff. But will two or three cold days of practice prepare this warm-weather team for what awaits it this weekend? "You hope guys look past it and just go play the game," said offensive lineman Tony Boselli. A native of Colorado, the All-Pro left tackle has always tapered his jersey sleeves so that they barely cover his shoulder pads. The idea is to not give defenders something to grab hold of. He said he doesn't plan a change for this game. "It's just a fact that it's going to be cold and it's going to be windy," Boselli said. "So let's cry about it now and get it all out, then go play the game. Because once you get up there, nobody cares if the weather's bad." An assistant for Bill Parcells when he was with the New York Giants, Jaguars coach Tom Coughlin knows how the cold temperatures and swirling winds can affect a football game at the Meadowlands. He's seen the 1-yard punts. He's seen passing games destroyed. He's seen that overhead garage-like door in the west end zone opened and closed at just the right time for the home team. "He used to do that," Coughlin said. "I'll be looking for that one." He'll also spend the week preparing his team for things it can control, like drilling his kickers on the physics of the swirling winds and telling receivers to lock onto Mark Brunell's passes for a split-second longer. "I'd say 98 percent of time, Mark throws with enough velocity that wind is not going to take his ball," Coughlin said. "But for a receiver, he has to stay with a ball a lot longer in the wind. It'll move right before it gets into his hands." The cold-weather issue could just be part of a bigger problem for the Jaguars: Their inability to win important games on the road. Lost in this successful season is the fact that not since the 1996 playoff upset of the Denver Broncos has Jacksonville beaten a winning team away from home. Their biggest road game of this season resulted in a 30-15 loss at Pittsburgh. Even that came on an unusually warm day. The five-day forecast for the New York-New Jersey area calls for temperatures in the high 30s with a chance of rain on Sunday. Wind is almost a given anytime at the Meadowlands. Defensive lineman John Jurkovic played in Green Bay for five seasons before heading South. He'll be a popular guy as players figure out how to combat the conditions. "Weather is weather," Jurkovic said. "The only thing I tell these guys is, don't try to be a hero. Don't try to be Superman with no sleeves and all that. You just want to be comfortable. Make it so you're comfortable from the first snap to the last snap." One other piece of advice offered by Boselli would be appropriate regardless of the conditions. "You want to run the ball, you've got to be physical, pound and control the line of scrimmage," he said. "The wind will be a challenge for Mark and the receivers. If we can run the ball, we can take a lot of pressure off that."
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