JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – What is wrong with the Jaguars?
Two weeks ago, Jacksonville was realistically looking at contending for the top playoff seed in the AFC. Two erratic games later and a lot of injuries later, the Jaguars are just hoping to get out of rut and do enough to win the AFC South.
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After Sunday’s 31-27 loss to the Browns, Jacksonville (8-5) is in its second two-game losing streak of the season. Baltimore (10-3) is headed to town for a Sunday night showdown at EverBank Stadium, a game that just a week earlier felt like it could be for the No. 1 seed. Now, coach Doug Pederson has a growing list of things for his team to clean up as it tries to get back on track.
“I believe four weeks is plenty of time,” Pederson said. “We’ve been able to do that, we’ve shown it in about the mid-season point of our season. We were playing pretty good football right in there.”
Jacksonville has been besieged by injuries all over the roster and has regressed on the defensive side of the ball over the last two games. Pederson said that many of the Jaguars issues are correctable mistakes and they hoped to work on cleaning those up this week.
“The things when you look at the tape, it’s all the self-inflicted stuff. It’s negative runs or incomplete passes early in the down, it’s pre-snap penalties that put you in first and 15′s, route details, just fundamental things that we can control,” Pederson said Monday.
“Really, the same thing on defense. Just not staying disciplined in the gaps, missing tackles on the perimeter, all things that are within our control that we’ve got to get back to doing. You get those corrected and you put a little bit of attention to detail on those, I think you will be back to playing good football and competing.”
The list of concerns is growing.
Quarterback Trevor Lawrence played through a high ankle sprain and started against the Browns after injuring it against Cincinnati, but he was erratic. Lawrence tossed three interceptions against Cleveland’s tough defense. Add a lost fumble by Parker Washington and Cleveland turned those into 14 points. Leading receiver Christian Kirk is on injured reserve and neither Zay Jones nor Calvin Ridley picked up that slack against Cleveland. The running game has been nonexistent, too. Jacksonville had 58 yards on 20 carries against Cleveland and 25 for 71 against Cincinnati. Before those last two losses, the Jaguars had started to play better.
There are reasons for those struggles.
In every metric available, the offensive line was average at best entering the season. It has been pounded by injuries, including having to play Blake Hance at left tackle Sunday after an injury to starter Ezra Cleveland. Predictably, the Browns and elite edge Myles Garrett took advantage of that. Hance is essentially the fourth-string left tackle.
“I don’t want to say impossible, but it’s hard,” right guard Brandon Scherff said of the challenges and communication issues along the line. “The continuity between the offensive line, it’s hard to be on the same page if somebody is coming in and coming out. We’re not making those excuses and we want to be the best unit out there each and every game. That’s what we’re striving to be. There’s no excuses, we’ve got to just keep playing.”
Pederson said those challenges exist across the board for every NFL teams, but they have to adjust, compensate and overcome.
“It’s hard, you’ve got different personnels, different bodies, different people. But it’s not an excuse that we’re going to use. Everybody reps those plays in practice, they know exactly which plays they’re going to be in on,” Pederson said. “The cadences are all predetermined going into a football game what we’re going to use. There’s no excuse; we’ve just got to focus in and detail that part of our jobs.”
In back-to-back games, Jacksonville has been carved up on the defensive side of the ball by a backup quarterback and a practice squad call-up quarterback. The Bengals and Ravens racked up a combined 65 points and 880 yards against the Jaguars, numbers that would have been understandable with Joe Burrow and Deshaun Watson, respectively, leading those teams.
Instead, Jake Browning and Joe Flacco were the players who carved up Jacksonville. Browning made just his second career NFL start against the Jaguars and went 32 of 37 passing for 354 yards. Flacco was called up from the practice squad a day before the game and fired three touchdown passes against a depleted Jacksonville secondary in a wire-to-wire win.