Jacksonville Jaguars general manager Dave Caldwell gave his season-ending press conference on Tuesday afternoon and spoke in broader terms about the state of the franchise, his relationship with head coach Gus Bradley, and their plans for the offseason.

In my opinion, Caldwell is a really interesting interview, no matter the time of season. He's blunt, he's calculated, and if you're willing to read between the lines of what he says you'll pick up on some interesting tidbits. (Or at least you'll think you did.)

Tuesday afternoon was no exception and here are some of the highlights from his press conference:

"I know this: he can make difficult decisions. I thought his game management was very good throughout the year. Just his leadership skills. He’s terrific in front of the team. The players love playing for him and they play their tails off for him, we’re not an overly-penalized team, we take fairly good care of the ball. Those are usually three things that will usually transcend into victories in the future. I think all of those things. He has a plan and he’s got a good offensive and defensive mind when it comes down to the Xs and Os."

I agree, sort of. Gus can make difficult decisions (at times) but some difficult decisions he makes aren't necessary. For example, benching Davon House in the middle of the season after a rough game against the Houston Texans and Pro Bowl receiver in DeAndre Hopkins. I understand Bradley's reasoning that he wanted his players to go hard every snap from start to finish, but was the week before the London game when he'd gone up against (arguably) the best receiver in the league the time to do it? No.

And there are some hard decisions Gus shied away from making. Why weren't Chris Clemons or Andre Branch benched this year? They had exponentially more games where they were ineffective or outplayed their opponent, yet their snap counts weren't diminished until the final game of the season. With several other positions -- wide receiver, running back, linebacker -- the team went to the well (either other team's practice squads or their own) and found guys who could be serviceable. But not with LEO, the most important position on the defense?

"I think it’s easier in this league to fix a defense than it is an offense. It took us three years to get where we need to be offensively. It’s not like we don’t have any pieces on defense; we do have some good players. We have a mountain of cap space and eight draft picks, coupled with players that we felt like had good years on defense."

I think this is true, especially considering the hardest position to fill is quarterback. I'd also say this is an implicit way of saying "We're going to focus on defense this offseason." We all knew that, but Dave's "mountain of cap space" is also saying they're going to look into free agency.

(After the pass rusher, what is your biggest priority?) "I think it’s something we have to sit through with our coaches and go through all of the offseason evaluations and look at our players in the secondary, look at our linebackers and look at the rest of the defensive line and try to prioritize what holes can we fill in free agency and then what would give us the best flexibility in the draft."

Dave went right for the secondary when asked about the biggest need on this team after pass rushers. I might be reading too much into it, but I think that's an implied "we're going to upgrade our secondary in free agency and the 2016 NFL Draft." There are cornerbacks in free agency this year (Janoris Jenkins, pls) and free safeties (Jalen Ramsey, PLS) and I think the Jaguars could take swings at both of them.

"I’ll tell you guys so that we don’t have a major Twitter frenzy, [Blake Bortles] does have a broken thumb on his non-throwing hand, a non-displaced fracture. So if you see him in a cast, that’s why. I don’t want you seeing him out on the street with a cast and tweeting it ... He did it in the game Sunday. He’ll just be in a cast a couple of weeks. I don’t want you guys to be alarmed about it."

Bortles has a broken thumb on his non-throwing hand. Meh. Caldwell didn't seem too concerned, and you shouldn't either.

"A lot of people say, ’12 wins in three years’ and ‘Gus Bradley, his record is 12-and-whatever-it-is.’ I don’t hold Gus responsible for the first two years. That was tough. The plan was, we didn’t do anything free agent-wise of note our first year here, played a lot of rookies and just kind of survived. Last year we signed some free agents that were kind of stop-gap type of guys, but still were playing young guys. I think we played nine guys on offense that were rookies and, as you saw, paid dividends this year. It was more gearing toward this year and next year and the year after. If you would’ve asked me three years ago, ‘Do you think you’ll have a winning record by Year Three?’ I wouldn’t have been sold on that."

Whew. A lot to take in here. First, the relationship between Caldwell and Bradley is incredibly strong. Caldwell essentially falls on his sword for the guy by saying he had a subpar group of personnel his first two years. Second, he says that he thought all along that the playoffs would be farfetched, even at Year 3 of the rebuild.

"Finding a free safety is kind of like finding a franchise quarterback, if not maybe more difficult in my estimation. But when we drafted James, we said, ‘Until we find our ideal fit, let’s go with two like guys.’"

Jalen. Ramsey.

"I don’t know if we’ll set the [free agency] market, but we’ll have our targets of guys that we really want and we’ll do whatever we need to get them ... Now we’re at that point in time where we can compete and compete for championships I have no issue with signing guys that are 30, 31 and 32."

Mountains of cap space. We'll do whatever we need to get them. 30, 31, and 32. Free agency is going to be fun, y'all.

"I think [Luke Joeckel can be the long-term answer at left tackle], I do. If you look at games, Week 1 through 16 he gave up two sacks. If the season ended Week 16 you probably wouldn’t ask that question today."

Dave is absolutely right. First, Joeckel played a good season. It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad either. He's a serviceable left tackle in this league and you can win with a serviceable left tackle.

(On lack of pass rush and discussion to look elsewhere) "There was and we made some inquiries on certain players that just don’t work out for one reason or another. But there was, and trade deadline came and although all these players that were supposed to be available for trades weren’t available so there were different discussions that we had, we tried and they didn’t work out."

It's good to see the team was trying to address the pass rush problem all year, but I still don't understand how we couldn't bring in one outside guy. Just one.