For those of you who have listened to the podcast for a long time or follow me on Twitter this may come as a surprise coming from me. I have made no beefs about going after Peyton for his less than clutch play in big games. I do believe that some guys are clutch and some aren’t and Peyton, well he isn’t. I feel if you look at his history it shows this. That however is about the only thing bad you can say about Manning. Other than that if you were to make up a perfect quarterback Manning would hold all of the qualities that you would want.

Before I go into why the Jaguars should go after him let’s look first at why Peyton may want to come play in Jacksonville. First even though things look like they ended well with Jim Irsay, you have to believe Peyton would love to stick it to him a couple of time a year, playing in the AFC South gives him that chance. The next would be weather. The Jets seem to be a popular choice to be Peyton’s next team but why would an aging quarterback who has played his whole career in a dome want to go freeze in New York? I know Farve did it but he was coming from Green Bay so he was use to it. The weather in Jacksonville is great. The Jaguars were bad last year but look at this, they have one of the (if not the) best running backs in football and the sixth ranked defense. The Jags would need to add some WR’s also but if they do that then the Jaguars are a team to be dealt with. The last reason Peyton might want to choice Jacksonville is the microscope wouldn’t be as big on him as Miami or New York. Peyton be under a microscope this year but in New York everything he does would be questioned, as in Jacksonville not so much.

Now why should the Jaguars go after Manning, well he’s Peyton Manning. This would do several things for the Jaguars, first if he is healthy and gets close to his old form it dramatically improves their team. That is kind of the no brainer but it does more than that. The Jaguars are working hard on selling out the stadium and growing fan support and you might not ever have a chance to give your franchise a shot in the arm like this. Bringing Peyton in would get fans excited about the season and draw in new fans.

Two questions that would come up with this move are one are you giving up on Blaine Gabbert and two what if Peyton can’t play anymore. The answer to the Gabbert question is no you are not giving up on him. Gabbert struggled badly last season and could of used time to learn the game. Who better to learn from than Peyton Manning. Manning is famous for his work ethic and knowing how to prepare. If Peyton couldn’t play then you hired another quarterback coach to help Blaine Gabbert. Either way it’s a win for the Jaguars.

The next week will be very interesting to see where Peyton ends up. Wherever it is the fans of that team will be thrilled to have him.

Judging only by the number of times I’ve been asked how I like my Vita and the conversation on Twitter about it, I’d say there is a lot of buzz for the Vita. When I got mine last week I was as excited as a kid on Christmas morning and after having my Vita for several day I can say that I am not disappointed.

When you first power up the Vita you have to go through the normal setup process, setting time, date and things like that. In true Playstation fashion you can’t sign into your PSN account until you do an update. Because of this you have to sign in as a guest and then finish the rest of the start up process. You can’t do the update until you have done this which is a little silly. After that you update the system which takes a couple of minutes (nothing like updating the PS3 for the first time). After the update you can sign in and off you go. My Vita was about 80% charged so I could play for awhile before having to charge it again.

The interface is really nice and the touch is snappy and responsive. The icons are bubbles and looks very IOSish. You swipe up or down to scroll through the menu and hold down a bubble and they start to shake. From this point you can move icons by dragging them or delete them. There are certain apps you can’t delete (like the web browser but there are parental controls that allow you to lock it out.) Once you click on a icon a start menu appears and you have to click it to start the program. This is one thing I wish they cut out, why not go straight into the program? To exit a program click the Playstation button and it takes you out of it but it doesn’t close it. To do this you have to drag you finger from the top right corner of the screen and pull down like you are tearing off a sticker.

I had heard that load times where lengthy but I didn’t have that problem. The first time you put a game it will install the game and an icon on the screen. I’ve been playing Uncharted mostly and the controls work great, I love having the two thumbsticks. The game looks and feels like I’m playing on a PS3, the only downside I’ve found is the size. The size is great for playing games but it’s a little big to carry in your pocket. This is one thing I love about the 3DS is it fits nicely in my pocket but even with that I’m not complaining because the size is great when you are playing.

I was very excited when the Vita was announced and I have to say I am not disappointed. Hopefully this device will be supported by third party developers better than the PSP. As long as Sony has taken care of the hacking and illegal game downloads I think that they will. It’s a great platform and I am very excited about it future.

Playstation seems to drop the ball so often that it has become a running joke.  For me the latest is with the PS Vita’s first bundle that allows gamers to get the Vita a week before it’s launch date.  The idea is pretty cool but the problem that not everything was ready.  First of all if you try to use Media Go to transfer old PSP downloads the software doesn’t recognize the Vita.  Your computer will and will install the drives needed but Media Go itself does not, so you can’t transfer games using it.  The work around to this problem is use your PS3 (if you have one) to download the games and the PS3 will be able to transfer games to the Vita.

A bigger problem is the apps that Playstation advertises aren’t ready for the device yet, well at least they haven’t been released.  This includes the Netflix, Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare apps.  Now I know that all of these are third party apps and are out of the hands of Sony but even Sony’s own apps aren’t available yet.  The Vita comes with several AR cards to play augmented reality games but to play these games you need to download apps that aren’t on the store yet.  This to me is a huge fail on Sony’s part.  I’m ok with the third party apps not being available right away but games that come with the system not being available is crazy.  I know what some of you are thinking, it doesn’t release until next week and they will work then, yes this is true but why do an early release then.  Why let your die hard fans get their hands on something that isn’t totally ready.  Also this has been out in Japan for several months and don’t they have the same AR cards?

In the grand sceme of things it’s not that big of a deal.  It’s cool to finally get our hands on a Vita and it is really nice.  I wouldn’t be playing the AR cards now anyway because of Uncharted, which is amazing, but they should of had this part available when the Vita shipped.

I couldn’t hardly wait to open up the Vita and get to playing but I did long enough to record this video.  I hope you guys enjoy it and send me a friends request if you have a Vita.

I got a letter in the mail this week thanking me for being a Jaguars season ticket holder.  Included in the letter was a poster that included a list of the teams that the Jaguars would play at home during the 2012 season and it was only seven teams.   A note under that said that preseason teams and AFC North team was to be determined.  There was one major problem with that statement, the AFC North team isn’t to be determined.  If you know how the NFL schedule works every team plays the teams in it’s division twice and then one division in the AFC and one in the NFC.  That makes up 14 games of the 16 game season, the other two games are played againist teams from the other two divsions that finished in the same place.  With that being the case the Jaguars would play the Bengals from the AFC North.

Mr Khan has been very out spoken about his desire for the Jaguars to play in London and to expand their international appeal.  Which I’m all in favor of but not if it cost us a home game.  I understand that it’s one less game that the Jaguars have to worry about selling tickets but the season is already so short.  Just in case they do have a game in London though I’ve already started working on my wife for a London trip.

 Several years ago when the Jaguars changed their jerseys the alternative black jersey went away.  Well now it looks like it is coming back and will the Jaguars new primary color starting in 2013.  This would make the black jersesy the Jaguars home jersey with the teal jersey being the alternative jersey.  In 2012 Nike takes over the NFL jersey contract and all teams will have new Nike jerseys, however it will take a couple of years before all the teams get the “full Nike treatment”, the Jaguars will be the first to get this treatment.  

Nobody’s really sure what the new jerseys will look like but hopefully they will be more like the old jerseys than the current ones.  I always thought it was laughable when Mr Weaver said that they wanted a jersey that people would look at right away and would know it was the Jaguars, only to show off one of the most generic jerseys in the NFL.  The old jerseys had Jaguar logos on the sleeves and looked great but the new jerseys didn’t have the first Jaguars logo on it.  Mr. Khan has promised that we will not be disappointed in the new jerseys.  I’m sure hoping that he is right.

I have never played a Twisted Metal game before but Dez is going on and on about this game. The demo hit the PSN store yesterday afternoon and it took me about 20 minutes to download it. Go download it and look for us online.

Once I saw what the Arrived app did I was very interested but not really for the reasons they made the app. Arrived is a location based app that texts or e-mails friends when you have arrived at a certain place. What makes this different is that you have to set up the place in the app and then who you want to know you are there. Once you set it up (until you change it) it will text or e-mail these friends every time you go to this place. The idea is to invite friends to hang out without having to think about sending them a message. This however is not why I got excited about it.

The idea of Arrived is interesting but what I wanted to use it for is to let me wife know when I went to certain stores. This is happened more than once in my house where I go to Wal-Mart or some store during the day only to get home and have my wife tell me she wished she’d known I was going there. To solve this problem I thought I would use this app to alert my wife when I go to certain stores. The one downside to this is the text isn’t sent right away. I’m sure this app checks every 15 minutes or so to see if you are at one of the locations and then sends an alert. The problem is by the time my wife gets it and text me back I’ve been gone for awhile. This isn’t necessary a faulty app problem but more likely the way it was setup. If it constantly checked where you were it would drain your battery.

This app does have some issues that are the app’s problem. The interface is clunky. It took me awhile to figure out how to delete someone from a location or how to delete a location. If you want to add someone to a location and you already have it setup for other people, then you have to add everyone again. However I think one of the biggest problems is there is no way to setup how to notify the person you are there. Take my wife for example, I have three numbers and two emails for her. With this app I have no way of saying to text her to this number or don’t text her but e-mail her. I contacted the Arrived people about this issue and they said it was something that they would look into.

I think this is a great idea and could become a great app but it needs some work before it’s ready for primetime. It is free though and worth checking out and watching for updates. If they could get the bugs worked out and get a better response time from when you arrived to when the text goes out I think this could be a must have app.

Arrived’s Website

iTunes Store

While talking about the coaching search Mr. Khan made a comment about interviewing a big name coach that wanted the Jaguars to enter a “derby” for his services. Mr. Khan never came out and said who that coach was but it’s pretty clear the guy he was talking about was Jeff Fischer.

Khan laid out what the Jaguars wanted in a head coach, two of those things included being able to work with Gene Smith and not having a big ego. It appears that Jeff Fischer met none of those requirements. Fischer played the Rams vs the Dolphins to see how much control he could get. The Rams who didn’t have a GM in place ultimately won out. Mr Khan said the Jaguars were not willing to join that “derby”. Even at the press conference to announce Mike Malarkey as the head coach Mr. Khan made a comment about the coaching search not having any drama.

Like other fans I like the idea that Jeff Fischer may come to coach in Jacksonville. However after seeing everything play out I don’t blame the Jaguars for staying out of this one, plus while I think Fischer is a good coach his numbers aren’t that great. In 17 years as head coach of the Titans they made the playoffs just six times. I think in this case the Jaguars were right to look to someone else to be their man.

When I first heard that the Jaguars hired Mike Mularkey I was disappointed to say the least. I felt like the OC of the Jets and Mularkey both would be bad picks as a head coach. This is of course not knowing anything about him except for what I had read. Like many fans I wanted to at least know that the Jaguars were interviewing some bigger name coaches than what had been released. If those were the choices I felt that Mel Tucker should be the next Jaguars head coach. While I still think Tucker should of been the man, Mike Mularkey has grown on me.

Mularkey has grown on me partly after hearing his press conference and mostly after hearing that Mel Tucker would stay as defensive coordinator. I think it puts Mularkey in a potential weird spot having Tucker, who was the interim head coach, still on the staff and what about Mel Tucker who was passed over for Mularkey. Now not only did he not get the job but he has to step down and go back to his old position as defensive coordinator. I say all of this to say hats off to those two guys for putting what could be uncomfortable situation aside and doing what’s best for the team.

Time will tell if this was the right move by the Jaguars. One thing is sure, Mr. Khan has the future of Blaine Gabbert, Mike Mularkey, and Gene Smith all tied up together. Mularkey’s contract expires the same time as Gene Smith’s. If Gabbert does well both of those guys will probably be around, however if he continues to struggle then in three years it could be time to clean house again.