Gene Frenette: Hilarious Jaguars' schedule release video almost worthy of 'Emmy' award

When Asher Grodman of the hit CBS comedy “Ghosts” was asked by the Jacksonville Jaguars’ creative/social media team to help lead them in pulling off an entertaining 2023 schedule release video, the 35-year-old actor thought he had died and gone to heaven.

This was such a dream job for Grodman, a huge fan of the Jaguars since the team’s inception in 1995, he gladly did it for free minus travel and hotel expenses.

“Excitement,” Grodman said of his initial reaction to the Jaguars’ request during an hour-long phone interview with the Times-Union. “This is a team you follow and love. It brings you back to being an 8-year-old in New Jersey when my Dad, who was a [Detroit] Lions fan, encouraged me and my brother to find our own team. I chose the new team on the block that had the cool logo and cool colors.

“My brother started out rooting for the [Cincinnati] Bengals and then jumped from team to team. I stayed loyal [to Jacksonville].”

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So amidst a sea of New York Giants and Jets supporters in his Califon, N.J., neighborhood, Grodman became a Jaguars fan for life. Now his popularity among the team’s fan base has surely gone into orbit.

The hilarious 8-minute, 30-second video directed, narrated and mostly written by Grodman — featuring credible acting roles by owner Shad Khan, coach Doug Pederson, quarterback Trevor Lawrence and 11 other players — has already been viewed, as of Friday, by 6.5 million people across Twitter, Instagram and YouTube platforms.

“When they came to me for this video,” said Grodman, “they said, ‘We don’t know the scripted world, the comedy world. Can you do this?’“

Grodman and the Jaguars’ creative team of employees did it superbly. The result was a video titled, “It Was Written,” whose main theme operates under the premise that all NFL games are scripted, including the Jaguars’ franchise-turning 2022 season.

The video hammers home the point that the Jaguars rehearse every detail all week — leg cramps, touchdown celebration dances, the overtime pick-6 against the Dallas Cowboys — for every Sunday episode.

As Grodman says in the video: “Last year, the Jaguars had five games that were considered the most epic in team history. You know what we call that? Good writing.”

'It was a fun time'

Featuring 40 scenes that were shot over a two-day period on April 20-21, the video allows Jaguars fans to relive the euphoria of last season from a totally different perspective. It elicits laughter at the deadpan humor exhibited by players with no acting experience.

I apologize in advance if segments of this column are interpreted as spoiler alerts, but the truth is, a large majority of Jaguars fans have probably seen the video multiple times.

Yes, it’s that good and funny. So much so, USA Today and The Athletic ranked it in the top-5 among NFL teams schedule release videos.

Jaguars receiver Zay Jones, who received rave reviews for his two scenes, spoke of the satisfaction the players got from participating.

“The game that we play can be so serious all the time, the pressure involved with the dollars we make and the eyes that are on us,” said Jones. “To do something more light-hearted and push the NFL schedule for the fans, it was a fun time.”

Grodman, who returned to Jacksonville to help complete final editing from May 8-11, called the project “the greatest experience of my life,” partially because it involved finally meeting players from the team with whom he feels a lifelong attachment.

“What’s fun for me is taking my two greatest passions in life, acting and storytelling and my childhood obsession with the Jaguars,” said. “This is like a treasure trove of two worlds. My goal was to throw things in there that make Jaguars fans see themselves.”

The video clearly reflects the bonding culture that Pederson is credited with bringing to the Jaguars’ locker room after being hired last year.

It’s hard to find a scene in the video that lacks camaraderie or proper comedic timing, as many saw from cornerback Tyson Campbell.

From the needle Grodman sticks in ex-coach Urban Meyer at the start, to Khan saying an Emmy is the “true prize” over a Lombardi trophy, to Lawrence’s blank facial reactions to Grodman’s acting instructions, and then the quarterback telling the entire writing staff they were fired at the end, the video has a part “Seinfeld,” part “Saturday Night Live” vibe to it.

“You can’t do a video like this if you don’t have a compelling team or breakthrough season,” Khan said. “A video like this after our season two years ago, or the team we had then, obviously it would have never resonated. It would have fallen flat.”

No doubt, this video may compel a lot more fans to gravitate toward the Jaguars, which has been Grodman’s mission all along.

“Everywhere I’ve been in life, I’ve been the only Jaguars fan,” said Grodman. “I’ve tried to slowly convert people into my fandom. Comedy is a great way to invite people to the party.”

A total team effort

The project was hatched in February when Everett Sullivan, the Jaguars’ Director of Creative Media, started brainstorming ideas with Nick Birdsong, Director of Digital and Social Media, and multiple team employees on how to best showcase the schedule to fans when the NFL released it May 11.

“It was really me and Nick sitting down with five or six other people, having meetings once or twice a week, just kind of spit-balling ideas,” Sullivan said. “As soon as we started the scripted idea, the room was kind of laughing a little bit more. We kind of realized there was something there.

“This is not the most novel concept in the world. We know we won’t be the only ones playing with the idea of the NFL being scripted. We had to try and be the best in that category.”

Bringing in Grodman as a closer proved to be the right call. He solicited the aid of “Ghosts” director Trent O’Donnell, along with editor Kent Kincannon, to help perfect the video. Grodman also had the idea of making Andrew Wingard a stunt double for Lawrence, which led to the Jaguars’ safety pointing to three action photos of the quarterback and saying: “That’s me. That’s me. That’s me, too.”

One reason the video became wildly popular is it received total cooperation from players and former players. That included humorous cameos from Hall of Fame offensive tackle Tony Boselli and the re-appearance of defensive tackle John Henderson, showing his famous ritual from the 2000s of getting slapped in the face by a team trainer to get motivated for games.

Grodman lauded Henderson in the video as a “method actor,” followed by Henderson’s rib-tickling line: “There’s Brando, Daniel Day-Lewis and Big John.”

It all adds up to a quality production that consistently hits a high comedic bar.

“The level of buy-in that we had on this video was really rare, and in many cases, unprecedented,” said Birdsong. “To have the owner, the head coach, the franchise quarterback, all the starter-level players involved in it, them really being committed to acting and pulling this off, it speaks to the quality of the concept and them being great teammates.”

Khan, who performed in fraternity skits in college at Illinois and participated in Christmas videos for his Flex-N-Gate company back in the 1980s, was pleasantly surprised by the video’s quality.

“It was a lot slicker than I was expecting,” Khan said in a statement. “I went in thinking Amateur Night at the Jaguars, but it was pretty clear once we got going that this was going to be a Hollywood production. All credit to Asher [Grodman] and our staff.

“What I really love is rewatching it and finding things that maybe don’t dawn on you at first. There are things you notice, hear and see that are just a lot of fun the second or third time around.”

Zay Jones, Pederson get in character

Grodman had no problem expounding on multiple topics about the video, but hesitated when asked about his favorite scene.

“You’re going to get me in trouble here,” he replied. “You’re asking me to pick my favorite child.”

But there’s no question that Jones and Pederson stood out by how smooth they looked in their deliveries.

Jones’ scenes were filmed while he was sitting on the grass inside TIAA Bank Field with Grodman, once having an existential moment about his role, saying: “I’m trying to figure out, like if I’m playing Zay Jones, who am I? I don’t even know any more.”

Jones was lauded by several people editing and filming for how quickly he got into character, ad-libbing many of his lines and coming up with the idea of acting deflated in his first scene.

“Zay brought so much of his personality to that,” Sullivan said. “It was actually 98 percent improv. He was incredible, a shining star, for sure.”

Grodman went so far as to say: “Zay could, and should, be an actor when he’s done with his football career.”

In a follow-up scene, Grodman tells Jones how much it meant to him to work with the receiver. He adds that’s why he “gave him the fourth down catch” that led to the Jaguars’ first TD in a win over the Indianapolis Colts, as well as the winning 2-point conversion against the Baltimore Ravens.

A grateful Jones, his eyes suddenly lighting up, looks at Grodman and says, “Dude!” with the two clasping hands in a bonding moment.

“We ad-libbed that entire part, me and him, that wasn’t scripted,” Jones said. “We just went off each other and made it come to life. I had a general idea of how it was supposed to go and just started doing lines that I thought were funny. Asher and I were really in sync. It worked organically.”

Pederson’s one scene comes during a deadpan interview in the Jaguars’ television studio. He playfully reveals Doug Pederson is just a stage name and that his real name is “Pug Dederson,” whose acting career got started at a regional theater playing Mercutio, a character from Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.”

Grodman said he was in awe of Pederson’s performance because he “comes off as a guy who knows everything about acting and nothing about football. I can’t imagine there’s many NFL coaches who would do this. Just the creativity, humility and sense of play Doug had just blew me away.”

Pederson even poked fun at his own career as an NFL backup quarterback, saying: “I had never been to a football game before and I was cast as a player, and that was mostly as an understudy.”

The laughs are so plentiful, some might say you can’t make this stuff up. In this case, Grodman and a lot of creative people did just that.

A labor of love

Birdsong says making an 8-minute, 30-second Jaguars’ video for social media may not sound like a long time, but it often felt like an eternity for those involved with the project.

“In the world of social media, that’s like 10 hours,” said Birdsong. “It’s a testament to how well it was done and put together that people paid attention to the whole thing.”

There was only three weeks between filming and the video’s release. It required dozens of hours of editing, plus Sullivan staying in consistent communication with Grodman after he initially left Jacksonville to go back to New York City.

Most work days felt like Grodman and the Jaguars’ employees were operating their own version of a hurry-up offense. The editing was completed only hours before the schedule release.

In one of the video’s most memorable scenes in the writers' room, Grodman pretends to get on the phone with Cowboys owner Jerry Jones to inform him about how the game they scripted with the Jaguars will end.

“We’re going to end it on an overtime pick-six [by Rayshawn Jenkins], but we need Dak [Prescott, Dallas quarterback] to hit [receiver] Noah Brown in the helmet so it ricochets into our guy’s hands,” said Grodman. “Can he make that throw?”

After Jones tells him no, Grodman adds: “We could CGI [computer-generated image] it. … Great.”

Just to edit that one scene from the video, Grodman spent a full day working with an editor at a friend’s wedding in Barbados, crafting that moment to get everything right.

“Figuring out the exact timing of that phone call, that took the most work, for sure,” said Grodman. “I love that joke.”

Everything about the video was a labor of love for Grodman, who has attended a total of 14 Jaguars games, home and away. He made seven games last season, including regular-season wins over the Ravens, Cowboys, Tennessee Titans, Houston Texans, New York Jets and Los Angeles Chargers. He also sat in the New England Patriots’ nosebleed section for the gut-wrenching 24-20 Jaguars’ loss in the 2017 AFC Championship game.

Grodman will return to Montreal this summer, pending a resolution to the writers’ strike, for the filming of a third season of “Ghosts.” It’s currently running a close second to “Young Sheldon” — both over 9 million viewers — as the highest-rated comedy on broadcast television.

Ironically, Grodman’s character on “Ghosts” is named Trevor Lefkowitz, who walks around half-naked in the afterlife by wearing boxer shorts and no pants. It’s pure coincidence the character has the same first name as the Jaguars’ quarterback, who was drafted after the test pilot of “Ghosts” had aired.

“Maybe the Trevor character was an omen that worked against the Jets to help them win that game against the Rams [delivering the No. 1 draft pick in 2021 to the Jaguars],” said Grodman. “We should do a day where I dress up as Trevor and him as my character.”

Now that, along with a scripted Jaguars Super Bowl victory, would make for a compelling social media video.

Gfrenette@jacksonville.com: (904) 359-4540. Follow him on Twitter @genefrenette  

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Jaguars, 'Ghosts' actor Asher Grodman score big with schedule release video