It is easy to make snap judgments based on one game in the NFL. Fans and experts do it every week and most of the time they are wrong. The point of this article is not to make a snap judgment based solely on the Jaguars loss this past Sunday. It is clear from the first half of the 2023 season that the Jacksonville Jaguars are a good football team. They will probably win the AFC South and host at least one playoff game. The question, however, is not whether or not the team is good. The question is whether or not the Jaguars are one of the elite NFL teams.
The Jaguars Are Not Elite…Yet
The Jaguars are good, but they are not elite. They have elite talent all over the field. They have good coaches. The team even has really good special teams players in punter Logan Cooke, kicker Brandon McManus, and returner Jamal Agnew. There are, however, numerous gaping holes in this team that are preventing them from reaching the elite status that teams like the Eagles, 49ers, Chiefs, Ravens, and Bengals currently enjoy.
The Pass Rush Is a Liability
Josh Allen gets to the quarterback regularly, but nobody else does. The real truth is that even Allen, with as many sacks as he has, is not even close to the Bosa/Watt/Donald type of defensive dominance that sets teams apart. Allen is good and he is going to get paid, but he often disappears for large parts of games. Foye Oluokon had two sacks against the 49ers, but they were his first two sacks of the season and they were not game-changing or drive-stopping sacks. DC Mike Caldwell was hesitant to dial up blitzes, but that was the only way they were getting any pressure. Travon Walker probably had the best game of his career on Sunday which means he played a little better than average for an edge rusher.
All told, Brock Purdy had enough time in the pocket to take a sip of espresso, check his stats for the day, call his mom on the phone, and then complete touchdown passes to George Kittle, Brandon Aiyuk, and some fullback that nobody really knows. Trevor Lawrence, on the other hand, was sacked five times, hit 10 times, and never had time to get comfortable in the pocket. The 49ers went after and got Chase Young for a third-round pick. The Jaguars went after and got a backup guard. Elite teams get to the passer, the Jaguars do not.
They Struggle With Short Yardage Situations
Short-yardage situations for the Jaguars are almost a joke at this point. With their five best offensive linemen on the field together for the first time this year, they still struggled to pick up six inches when they needed it. In fact, on their first drive of the second half, when they were down 17 and needed a score, they had the ball on the San Francisco 34 and were driving. It was third and inches and D’Ernest Johnson had a couple of nice plays on the drive. The Jaguars, instead of giving the ball to Johnson, brought in Tank Bigsby. They then lined up in a shotgun formation and dropped back to pass. Lawrence got pressured immediately, and when he tried to throw the ball to Bigsby, it went through his hands into the hands of a 49ers defender. The game was all but over at that point.
For some reason, all season long, the Jaguars have waited until third down or fourth down and short to get creative in their play calling. At some point, they are going to have to figure out how to get first downs and keep drives alive. Maybe OC Press Taylor still does not trust the offensive line or maybe he consistently sees things that nobody else does in short-yardage situations. Whatever the case may be, elite teams keep drives alive, and the Jaguars do not.
The Offense Is Worse Than the Sum of Its Parts
There is a saying first coined by Aristotle that goes, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” When teams work together and players learn to complement and help each other, that team can be better than what the talent predicts. The Jaguars offense, at least to date, seems to be operating in the opposite of that statement. On paper, this offense should be prodigious. The foundation of any offense is its quarterback, and in Trevor Lawrence, the Jaguars have a good one. Travis Etienne, though his per-carry average is low, is a really good and dynamic feature back. The receiving corps. with Calvin Ridley, Christian Kirk, Zay Jones, and Evan Engram should be one of the best. Even the offensive line is “good enough” on paper to make this offense good.
The problem is that it is not an overall good unit. They turn the ball over often, underperform in the red zone, and rarely convert third downs. When the team has been down and needed the offense to step up against the Texans and 49ers, they disappeared. They even had a great shot at beating the Chiefs and could not put a drive together. The offense is not bad, but it is worse than the sum of its parts. Until the offense becomes elite, the Jaguars will not be a complete football team.
Main Photo Credit: Corey Perrine/Florida Times-Union
