Should Jaguars trip to London be a 1-way flight for Gus Bradley?

The Jacksonville Jaguars will catch a flight to England on Friday to play the Indianapolis Colts at Wembley Stadium in Week 4, a grueling trip made even worse by their winless start to 2016.

Based on their atrocious play so far this season, the Jaguars will likely drop to 0-4, killing any remaining hope of making their first playoff appearance since 2007.

So the question becomes, should head coach Gus Bradley still have his job when the Jaguars board their return flight to Jacksonville?

There is precedent for this precise type of move.

Last season, the Miami Dolphins fired head coach Joe Philbin after an embarrassing loss at Wembley which dropped the club to 1-3.

Philbin's and Bradley's situations are nearly carbon copies of each other. Like Bradley, Philbin was in his fourth season as head coach, had failed to make the playoffs during that period, and had been unable to bring along his highly drafted quarterback.

A midseason firing is always a dramatic move, and the Dolphins barely improved in the short term in 2015, but the time has come for the Jaguars to move on from Bradley and look to the future.

After compiling a 12-39 record over the past three seasons, one can argue the move should have come sooner.

The Jaguars put together an offseason that should've propelled them to the playoffs. It was a make-or-break season for Bradley thanks to the talent acquired and the promise shown in 2015, and while it has broken much sooner than expected, there's no reason to delay the inevitable.

The Jaguars have a bye week after the game at Wembley, so there will be no better time to make this change. They would have two weeks to reorganize, and have a natural replacement in offensive line coach Doug Marrone, who has experience as a head coach.

It's tough to essentially punt on the rest of the season, but this team isn't built to win now. They have one of the strongest core of talented young players in the league, with Allen Robinson, Allen Hurns, Jalen Ramsey, T.J. Yeldon, Malik Jackson, Dante Fowler Jr., and Myles Jack all 26 years old or younger.

The focus should be on finding a coach who can put all the pieces of the puzzle together, like Mike Zimmer has done with the Minnesota Vikings.

The biggest piece of the Jaguars' puzzle is unquestionably quarterback Blake Bortles.

Bradley is a defensive-minded coach, and his inability to build a playoff-caliber defense is among his biggest failings in Jacksonville. But the Jaguars can recover on that side of the ball, what they can't recover from is Bortles regressing any further.

The third-year passer has continued to struggle with turnovers in 2016, forcing passes and allowing his technique to become sloppy. It's far too soon to close the book on Bortles, but they need to find out if he's a legitimate franchise quarterback before they hand him a big-money deal.

The Jaguars can't allow a lame duck head coach to get in the way of that.

When the Jaguars inevitably slump into their seats on the flight home from London with another loss hanging over their heads, the Bradley era should come to an unceremonious end.