Jan. 15, 2023.
The Jacksonville Jaguars have just won a momentous playoff game, coming back from down 27-0 to defeat the Los Angeles Chargers. Voice gone, heart full, phone battery dead, I walked from the stadium back to my hotel to write my story from the game. In my story, one phrase really stood out:
“There was a small, shared belief in the stadium that if the Chargers fucked around, they would find out. And boy did they find out.”
Fast forward to Jan. 7, 2024, and one thing is true: Someone fucked around and found out. This time, it was the Jaguars, who lost to the Tennessee Titans, 28-20, to knock themselves out of the playoffs.
The Jaguars were 8-3 in October, a game away from the No. 1 seed in the AFC. 8-3! Now, they’re sitting at home watching a rookie QB and a rookie head coach represent the division they were supposed to have locked down for the next decade.
The second half of the season was an organizational and coaching failure any way you want to slice it. Losing five of your last six is a disaster by everyone involved, but when you examine the losses, they’re all the same.
The defense, which was one of the Jaguars’ stronger points in the first half of the season, fails at simple things like tackling. Miscommunication in the secondary leads to coverage busts and wide open touchdowns. Offensive line issues sink a team that can’t run the ball and force everything on the arm of their third-year QB, who had issues with fumbles. Oh yeah, and that QB also dealt with a high ankle sprain, shoulder injury, and concussion that all lingered during the losing streak. Good times!
The most damning part of this is that the Jaguars believed they could run it back. In last year’s off-season, Jacksonville didn’t make many substantial changes. Replacing Jawaan Taylor with rookie Anton Harrison on the offensive line and bringing in Calvin Ridley were both fine, but nothing drastically changed about a team that went 9-8 last year. The hope was that the young talent continues to ascend with proper development and coaching.
The result? 9-8 once again.
This failure of a season is on GM Trent Baalke, head coach Doug Pederson and the playcalling of the Jacksonville Jaguars’ braintrust. It’s one thing to collapse and have every loss bring something different. Every loss hit the same notes, showing no signs of growth or actual change. The offensive line struggles that started in the beginning of the season reared their ugly head again in the Week 18 finale. A rollout pass on 3rd-and-goal to the third-string TE is a play that shows you’re scared of the line in front of you to block properly, and the Jaguars were terrified of it all season. Per FTN Fantasy, the Jaguars finished 31st in Adjusted Line Yards offensively, and you could feel that when the Jaguars played. They finished with the highest percentage of runs stuffed, every big run seemingly followed by a loss of 3. This offensive line was the same one that Jacksonville had last year, and opting to marginally fix it took them from 29th in 2022 … to 31st.
You now enter this offseason in what feels like the most pivotal moment for the franchise since I’ve been alive. You no longer have the leisure to sit back and do half-measures in the division. The Texans are a legitimate threat and the Colts were right there without their rookie QB. Something has to change about the makeup of this team, whether it be in the front office, coaching staff or personnel. Going into the fourth year with Trevor Lawrence at QB, the front office has to give their young star a better line to work with.
Andrew Nelles / The Tennessean / USA TODAY NETWORK
Let’s talk about Lawrence, shall we? The much-ballyhooed QB is going to be raked over the coals this offseason, and it’s nobody’s fault but the Jaguars. Personally, I am still of the belief that he is very good, but he has to be perfect for the Jaguars offense to survive. Lawrence has been good enough to get the Jaguars to the brink of being a serious football team, making up for major deficiencies at playcaller and along the offensive line with his play.
However, forcing a QB to do it all himself stretches them thin and turns their weaknesses into glaring holes. For Lawrence, the ball placement can be shaky at times and the fumbles are a weird and bad problem. Those problems become exacerbated when the offense can’t survive without Lawrence being perfect.
This collapse down the stretch should be a wake up call to owner Shad Khan and the rest of the Jaguars braintrust. Something significant has to change, or Jacksonville will be stuck in 9-8 land forever.