JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The Jaguars are heading to London and leaving their losing streak back in the States.
The Jaguars had their best performance of the season on Sunday, edging the Colts 37-34 in a back and forth thriller at EverBank Stadium. If ever the Jaguars needed a win, this was the game to do it in.
Recommended Videos
Trevor Lawrence led a game-winning drive in the final minute, setting up Cam Little’s 49-yarder to go ahead as the Jaguars escaped the Colts for a slump-busting win that nearly slipped away under an Indianapolis barrage in the fourth quarter. It wasn’t easy. Of course with the Jaguars, it seldom is.
Joe Flacco picked apart Jacksonville’s defense and led Indianapolis to three fourth-quarter touchdowns, including a 65-yard scoring pass to Alec Pierce with 2 minutes, 50 seconds to go. But Lawrence delivered on the go-ahead drive and Travon Walker picked up his third sack of the game to deny Flacco the shot at a comeback as time ran out.
“I think that’s going to make us better as a team too that it was even the first win of the season. It was tough, and it came down to the very end, and we had to earn it. All of that is going to build confidence moving forward,” said Lawrence, who celebrated his 25th birthday Sunday. “I think that’s what this team has done a good job of. Obviously a rough start, but we kept our confidence. We’ve kept swinging.”
It was a massive early season win for the Jaguars. The team welcomed former head coach Tom Coughlin into the Pride of the Jaguars and won wearing throwback jerseys from Coughlin’s time as head coach.
Lawrence threw the longest Jacksonville scoring pass since 2015, an 85-yarder to rookie Brian Thomas Jr., and won for the first time in 11 months. Head coach Doug Pederson has had to field questions about his job status during team’s losing skid and put the onus back on the players to step up and deliver.
For one week at least, all those nagging questions are shoved to the side. The Jaguars will head to London for games against the Bears (Oct. 13) and Patriots (Oct. 20) and could potentially return home with some semblance of a winning streak.
“To me, it’s not necessarily a surprise. I just think it’s a culmination of a lot of things,” Pederson said. “The way we work, the way we practice, the things we do during the week. It translated today. Proud of the guys for obviously the way we finished. Great team effort today.”
Lawrence in particular had to feel good about shedding his dubious streak. He’d lost consecutive starts dating back to his last win, a 24-21 victory over Houston on Nov. 26, 2023. Jacksonville had won just one game since then, and it was backup CJ Beathard who delivered that on Dec. 31, 2023, over the woeful Panthers. Lawrence passed for 371 yards (28 for 34) and a pair of touchdowns, finally answering the critics.
One win doesn’t erase an 0-4 start that has put the Jaguars (1-4) in a deep hole in the AFC South, but it’s a positive.
Chaotic close
They did that against Indianapolis (2-3), which hasn’t won a game in Jacksonville since 2014 but did everything it could to end that slide in a furious back and forth final quarter.
Flacco carved up the Jaguars once again, throwing two touchdown passes and setting up a short TD run with beautiful throw to Alec Pierce. Jacksonville led 34-20 after a 65-yard touchdown run by Tank Bigsby with 5:21 to play, seemingly enough of a cushion to get it to the finish. But Flacco came back firing. Pierce made a catch-of-the-year candidate on a 24-yard sideline snag, then followed that with a 46-yarder that went down to the 1. Trey Sermon punched it in one play later. The Jaguars followed with a three and out and Flacco hooked up with Pierce again two plays later on a 65-yard touchdown to tie things up.
Lawrence hadn’t been able to make game-winning drives against the Dolphins, Browns or Texans this year but did against the Colts. He said that he doesn’t listen to anything outside the building.
“That stuff doesn’t matter. You can’t listen to the good or the bad. So, I do think stuff that does get through, and I’m sure there’s a lot of questions. What’s going on with the Jags? What’s this? What’s that? After four weeks, good, we’ll use it as a chip on our shoulder and have that us against the world mentality and bring us closer together,” he said. “I think that’s what good teams do.”
Offense finally shows some life
Lawrence isn’t the only player on offense who has been mired in a miserable start but he’s certainly the most visible. That’s the standard for NFL quarterbacks, especially ones who have a contract as massive as Lawrence’s $275 million deal. Lawrence finally had his breakout game. He’d been held under 200 passing yards three times this year and surpassed his season high by halftime. The throw that energized EverBank was his 85-yard strike to rookie Thomas midway through the second quarter.
The Colts, leading 7-3 at the time, pinned the Jaguars back at their own 15. Lawrence dropped back and saw Thomas with a decent cushion and hit him in stride. No Indianapolis player came close to catching Thomas, one of the fastest players at this year’s NFL combine. Thomas ran a 4.33 time in the 40-yard dash.
“Like I said, that was a big emphasis, to come out and just finish,” Thomas said. “We’ve been in games where we’ve been close, we just haven’t finished, so that was a big emphasis for us, to just come out and finish. It feels great to be able to say that we did that.”
But it was Lawrence’s play in the final minutes that showed that the franchise quarterback can deliver. He threw a touchdown pass to Brenton Strange to put the Jaguars up 27-17 early in the fourth quarter and then took Jacksonville from its own 30 down to the Indianapolis 31 on the final drive, hitting D’Ernest Johnson, Luke Farrell and Christian Kirk on the drive to flip the field and get Little in position for the shot at the winner.
Defense comes up big before half
Jacksonville was driving for another score late in the second half, with Lawrence hitting Gabe Davis on a 21-yard strike that went to the Colts 34. Davis fumbled on the tackle. Instead of just taking a knee to end the half, the Colts tried to let Flacco get something going and paid for it. Walker turned the corner and had a strip-sack of Flacco. Josh Hines-Allen recovered, and the Jaguars turned that into a 30-yard field goal and 13-10 lead at the break.
Flacco hit all seven of his pass attempts on the opening drive, the final one a 1-yard touchdown to Michael Pittman Jr. for a 7-0 lead that felt like an ominous sign. They tightened up after that until the fourth quarter when Flacco carved them up for 24 points. Flacco, 39, was starting in place of Anthony Richardson, was 33 of 44 passing for 359 yards and three touchdowns. Ryan Nielsen’s defense has to find a way to tighten things up after three consecutive games of getting gashed.
Big game for Walker
The knock on Walker, the No. 1 pick in the 2022 draft, largely stems on who Jacksonville passed on to select him. The Jaguars liked Walker’s long-term potential more than edge rusher Aidan Hutchinson, who went No. 2 to Detroit. Hutchinson has been one of the league’s best pass rushers since he entered the league, while Walker has been good but not great. He had the strip-sack of Flacco before halftime and then dropped Flacco for another sack in the fourth quarter and then the sack to end it. Walker finished with five tackles, three sacks and a forced fumble, easily the best game of his career.
The ground game
Oft criticized as a rookie for too many gaffes, Bigsby has been a massive boost for the Jaguars ground game. He took a short pass from Lawrence and turned it into a 28-yard catch and run that nearly went into the Colts red zone. That play set up a 30-yard field goal. Bigsby’s best play came on the ground with the Jaguars trying to stay in front late in the fourth quarter. He took a handoff, made a cut and outran every Indianapolis defender for a 65-yard touchdown run. Bigsby finished with 101 yards and a pair of touchdowns on 13 carries.
“Well, I think there’s a weight off everybody’s shoulders. Right? Not just [Lawrence]. It’s a weight off of my shoulders too. Now you guys can get off my tail for at least a week,” Pederson said.
“Listen, that’s what I told the guys, I mean, if they just continue to stick together and work hard and trust what we’re doing and trust each other. That’s what you’re seeing, right? Is it perfect? No. It’s never going to be perfect. But the other thing you have to realize too, we’ve had five games. Four of them have been one-score games, right? So that’s another thing we have to get used to. These games are going to come down to the last drive or two of a game. And that’s something, as a team, we’ve got to embrace, and we’ve got to learn to do. And today was a good step.”