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All it took for the Jaguars to clinch a playoff spot on Saturday was, essentially, the karmic reversal of the Myles Jack was not down play of the 2017 AFC Championship Game. This time, Josh Allen’s scoop-and-score was the tiebreaker in a 20-16 win over the Titans to win the prime-time AFC South. It was a game that lived up to its stark craftsmanship, with all the brilliance of fireworks for pets with sensitive hearing.
There were two offensive touchdowns. No quarterback had a rating over 100. Derrick Henry averaged less than four yards per carry, but still ran the ball 30 times. Travis Etienne averaged 2.4 meters per run and disappeared like a political tweet someone did in college.
For those reasons, one could just erase this one from memory and choose to mentally fake the wild card weekend, which will see the Jaguars put together a playoff game despite being 3-7 there is no so long.
Lawrence has improved in his second season, along with the coaches and talent around him.
Bob Self/Florida Times-Union/USA TODAY Network
But we here at The MMQB choose to stick with our take from a few weeks ago. Jaguars are dangerous. The Jaguars are disruptors. The Jaguars will be a factor in the tournament. If you looked closely enough, Saturday proved it. See you all in the divisional round.
This potential is not only due to superfluous details; that they are a team on a mission from the football deities to punish and ridicule all aspects of the Urban Meyer era in Duval. No one forgets that Meyer had to defend himself against allegations ranging from kicking a player to not being so sure who Aaron Donald was. Certainly, no one in the building takes this for granted, knowing that Meyer’s movie, best practices, and general life philosophy were all to be exterminated the same way bed bugs must be gutted.
This belief isn’t just because the team is extraordinarily young and fun. It’s not just because after every good play we see team general manager Trent Baalke vigorously shaking director of football strategy (and owner’s son Shad) Tony Khan in the hurry. It’s not just because their fan base is wild and free. It’s not just because there’s something heartwarming about Doug Pederson, the man who delivered Philadelphia its only Super Bowl before being caught off guard a few years later with his pink underpants. becoming the one who puts all the pieces together.
Let’s start with the obvious: Saturday wasn’t Trevor Lawrence’s best game, and the Jaguars beat one of the best coached teams in football anyway. While we’re not going to be as critical of Lawrence as Troy Aikman, who treated the sophomore quarterback like a spelling parent in the booth, Lawrence clearly missed a touchdown throw, sharpened a backhand and short-cocked another potential. touchdown pass thanks to some inside pressure from Jeffery Simmons.
From Thanksgiving until Saturday’s Titans game, Lawrence had completed nearly 70% of his passes for 1,567 yards, 11 touchdowns and two interceptions. Against the Titans, he still completed nearly 2% of his passes above expectations, according to NFL NextGen stats. His last month and a half isn’t necessarily a heater by modern quarterback standards, but it’s a big enough library of data to lead us to believe he’d be better off against a much softer Chargers defense in one week.
The Jaguars were able to squeeze out enough offense to wipe out a 10-point deficit, which, against a team that deploys Henry and a mobile quarterback, can often feel like a death sentence. They were also able to thwart Henry, who the Titans ran almost exclusively as a pacemaker on first downs throughout the second half to make life easier for Josh Dobbs. On just four of those first tries, Henry got five yards or more.
Defensively, they’ve recorded 13 quarterback hits, giving them a total of 41 in their last four games, dating back to when they stunned the Cowboys to legitimize this run in the first place.
At the very least, this all stacks up nicely with a potential matchup with the Chargers, which the Jaguars are most likely set to face next weekend (although it could also be the Ravens). Los Angeles is another team that depends on run success and is vulnerable when its quarterback gets knocked down. The last time Lawrence faced a Brandon Staley defense, he went 28 of 39 for 262 yards and three touchdowns, in a 38-10 Week 3 victory.
While much of Jacksonville’s late-season run seems to have been a compilation of plays like that game-winning defensive touchdown, it ultimately comes down to the fact that it may cease to be a coincidence when it has been so reproducible. On a nearly endless loop on the Sunday show, we were told that Pederson predicted this very moment in a dispirited Kansas City locker room just nine weeks ago. Obviously he saw everything we see now, both the foreign and the tangible.
