Paul Posluszny: Jaguars ‘expect to have success, willing to put in the work’

Paul Posluszny gave it plenty of thought, but he knew the time was right to finally walk away from the NFL.

After 11 seasons, the last seven with the Jacksonville Jaguars, the linebacker knew he had accomplished plenty — even if he never did get that Super Bowl ring.

‘You want to have a lasting impact and find a way to help younger guys’

However, of all of Posluszny’s accomplishments, the biggest had nothing to do with individual achievement. It had the most to do with helping to groom an outstanding replacement in Myles Jack and helping to leave the Jaguars in good enough shape to continue to be the strong contender they were last season.

“At the end of the day, when you’re an older player, you say, ‘You know what? You want to have a lasting impact and find a way to help younger guys,’ because that’s going to be the most important thing,” Posluszny told Alex Marvez and Bill Polian on Late Hits. “Not how many tackles you had your last year, but how much of an impact did you have? How much were you going to help younger players and help them have an impact? So that made it easy. Working with a guy like Myles, because of the type of person he is, and then the strides that he’s made from Year One to Year Two have been very, very impressive, especially when you consider what they asked him to do.

‘(Myles Jack’s) going to be an unbelievable player for years to come’

“On first and second down, he’s playing more of an outside linebacker role and in third-down passing situations, he slides and plays inside or middle linebacker. There’s not a lot of guys that can do that, but he has the skill set, the mentality, the football intelligence, the football IQ to do all that. So it’s going to be awesome to see him continue to progress and grow. He’s going to be an unbelievable player for years to come.”

Posluszny said the Jaguars have so much more going for them than a good deal of talent. They also have the right attitude, which coach Doug Marrone helped cultivate.

‘We learned how hard things need to be in order to have the success that you want’

“Because of the foundation that was laid last year, with Coach Marrone and the way that he does things and the expectations that the players now have, they expect to play at a high level,” he said. “They expect to have success, but the most important part of that is they’re willing to put in the work that’s required. And last year we learned what that is all about, where we learned how hard things need to be in order to have the success that you want in December and January.

“So that’s the biggest thing, the guys want to win that championship, especially getting to the point where you’re so close to being able to play in that big game last year that guys are going to do everything they can, prepare as hard as they can and put in the required work to get to that level.”