by All it took for the Jaguars to clinch a playoff spot Saturday was essentially the karmic reversal of Myles Jack was not down game from the 2017 AFC Championship. This time, Josh Allen’s scoop-and-score was the decisive play in a 20–16 victory over the Titans to claim the AFC South in prime time. It was a game that lived up to its harsh billing, with all the blaze of a fireworks show for pets with sensitive hearing.
There were two offensive touchdowns. No quarterback had a rating above 100. Derrick Henry averaged fewer than four yards a carry, but still ran the ball 30 times. Travis Etienne averaged 2.4 yards a carry and disappeared like a political tweet someone made in college.
For these reasons, one might feel content to erase this one from memory and choose to mentally simulate wild-card weekend, which will see the Jaguars make a playoff run despite going 3-7 not too long ago.
Lawrence improved in his second season, along with the coaching and talent around him.
Bob Self/Florida Times-Union/USA TODAY Network
But we here at MMQB choose to stand by our assessment from a few weeks ago. Jaguars are dangerous. The jaguars are disruptive. The Jaguars will be a factor in the tournament. If you paid close attention, Saturday proved as much. See you all in the divisional round.
This potential isn’t just because of the extraneous details; that they are a team on a mission from the football gods to punish and mock every aspect of the Urban Meyer era in Duval. No one forgets that Meyer had to defend himself against allegations ranging from firing a player to not being quite sure who Aaron Donald was. Absolutely no one in the building takes this for granted, understanding that Meyer’s film, best practices, and general ethos all needed to be exterminated the way one must exterminate bed bugs.
This belief is not just because the team is exceptionally young and fun. It’s not just because after every good game we get to see the team’s general manager, Trent Baalke, vigorously shake head of football strategy (and son of the owner, Shad) Tony Khan in the press box. 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 going blind a few years later with his pink slip, becoming the one who fit 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 second-year quarterback like a spelling stepparent in the booth, Lawrence clearly missed a touchdown throw, reversed high and short-armed another potential. touchdown pass thanks to some inside pressure from Jeffery Simmons.
From Thanksgiving through 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 expectation, according to NFL’s NextGen Stats. His last month and a half isn’t necessarily a heater by modern quarterback standards, but it’s a significant enough data library to make us think he’d be better against a much softer Chargers defense a week from now.
The Jaguars were able to muster enough offense to eliminate a 10-point deficit, which, against a team that deploys Henry and a mobile quarterback, can often feel like a death sentence. They also managed to stop Henry, who the Titans ran almost exclusively as a pacesetter on first down throughout the second half to make life easier for Josh Dobbs. On just four of those first-down carries, Henry logged five yards or more.
Defensively, they recorded 13 quarterback hits, giving them a total of 41 in the last four games, dating back to when they overwhelmed the Cowboys to legitimize this run in the first place.
At the very least, all of this overlaps nicely against a potential matchup with the Chargers, who the Jaguars will most likely face next weekend (though it could also be the Ravens). Los Angeles is another team that relies on run success and is vulnerable when the quarterback gets knocked around. 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 so much of Jacksonville’s late-season run seems to have been a collection of plays like the game-winning defensive touchdown, one has to ultimately surrender to the fact that this can stop being random when it’s been so replicable. On a near-endless loop on the broadcast Sunday, we were told that Pederson predicted this very moment inside a defunct locker room in Kansas City just nine short weeks ago. Evidently he saw all that we see now, both the foreign and the tangible.
