Jacksonville Drops a Heartbreaker to Houston

JT: Wow. Just Wow!

Nobody has any answers. Not a single person. Not even the Head Coach, Doug Pederson. Did you see that presser after the loss? Doug “Mr. Cliche” Pederson was almost speechless. What he could manage to utter were the same ol’ same olds; The offense needs to offense. The defense needs to defense. Special teams needs to special team. We need to fire on all three phases. Blah blah blah. Made me think this press conference was brought to us by Schneider and the ex Mrs. Eddie Van Halen, for all of the "we’ve got to take it One Day at a Time” quotes that were thrown our way as an unexplainable explanation of the loss to a severely sub-par Houston Texans team. Pug Dederson couldn’t give us a single thing. He couldn’t point to a single problem. And THAT, my friends, is the biggest problem. The Jaguars didn’t fail in just one area yesterday, they failed in every single phase of the game. Almost every single player was to blame.

Let’s run down the list. Trevor Lawrence was mid (as the kids say) at best. Just an average Joe taking snaps. Middle of the pack does not equal a generational number one overall pick. Tank Bigsby and Brenton Strange, while they didn’t play enough to be good or bad, that in itself is a problem. Why did General manager Trent “Masterclass” Baalke and Doug Pederson draft these guys in the second and third round if they aren’t going to used? Especially when everyone and their mother knew that the most important need was pass rush, and to a certain extent DB. Evan Engram was not re-signed at that point so I could have understood drafting Strange and then letting Engram go next year but then we re-signed Engram. WHY DID WE DRAFT STRANGE? There were plenty of defensive needs that went unfilled because we took a tight end with the 30th pick. Then we followed it up with another running back with the 88th pick. Our tight end room was just fine. Our running back room was just fine. What wasn’t fine was our pass rush and our defensive back play. The coaches and GM mucked up this draft. While on the subject of the draft, we can place blame on Cam “PED” Robinson for forcing the Jags hand. Robinson’s suspension forced JAX to take Anton Harrison with their first round pick. Would the Jags have gone with a DE had Robinson been starting the season? I don’t know.

The offensive line of the Houston Texans started four back-ups. FOUR. There are only five players on an offensive line, folks. 80% of their offensive line were not good enough to be starters in the NFL. And yet it was the Jaguars offensive line (minus Walker Little maybe) who played like a Costco wheel of Jarlsberg. It was amazing that Travis Etienne was able to gain over 60 yards and be the only bright spot on the Jaguars offense. Don’t get me started on Calvin Ridley. A dropped touchdown pass (perfectly thrown). A false start and then another dropped pass that was fumbled upon being hit. Thank god it was ruled incomplete and not a fumble which it was very close to actually being. Calvin Ridley had himself a horrible game. He earned that “zero” on his chest against the Texans. The play calling was ho hum. So much so that our prolific (please read the sarcasm) offense was blanked on the scoreboard for the first 30 minutes. It was a boring and fruitless game plan.

Defensively, where was the pass rush? Chaisson had a QB hurry in the first half but that was about all he contributed. Travon Walker will forever live in the shadow of Aidan Hutchinson. Walker has not shown that he is a first round selection let alone the number one overall pick. Josh Allen came out of the gate like a pissed off bull in week one and then settled back into the role of average defensive end. Many are saying that JA could be Jordan if he had a Pippen. Maybe a Pippen if he had a Jordan. But Walker isn’t even a sixth man, thus Allen’s greatness is muted. I have said a few times that Defensive Coordinator Mike Caldwell has finally figured it out and is using his players correctly. But I may have to take that back to a certain extent. I still think that the Jaguars could get more out of their current defensive players if they put Walker inside. I don’t care if we play a 3-4 or a 4-3, what I do care about is drafting the right players for the right scheme and I don’t think we did that. We have the players for a solid and possibly dominating 4-3 yet we are still running a 3-4. When healthy put DaVon Hamilton and Travon Walker in the middle of the line with RRH and Ledbetter as swing guys. Keep Gotsis/Smoot (when healthy) as ends with Allen on the other edge. Lloyd, Oluokun, Muma and the others round out the three linebacker positions. Overall the defense played really really well the first two weeks of the season and many are saying that the defense kept the team in the game against Houston but I can’t get on board when you give up 37 points at home against a rookie QB with FOUR back-ups on the O-line. And where were the DBs? Every single WR on the Texans made huge plays, with relative ease. Darious Williams, Tyson Campbell, Andre Cisco where were you? You are the leaders back there. We expect more from you. Why don’t you expect more from yourselves? The defense does not get a pass at all.

As for the third phase, the special teams. WTH! A missed field goal. A blocked field goal. A muffed kick-off run back for touchdown BY A FULLBACK (btw, every time I type in all caps, in my mind I hear the late great Sam Kinison screaming those words. You should do the same). The entire team was playing so badly that I heard a fan in the 200s section, after a mediocre Jags punt, yell “great now even Logan Cooke sucks.” Folks, when Logan Cooke sucks, we’re done. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. How did we lose containment on a kick off and let a fullback out run all of our players? A slow ass fullback. Can you answer this one, Tre Herndon? While we are on the topic of special teams…Everybody loves Jamal Agnew. But do we love the fact that Jamal Agnew has fumbled the ball three times in the past four games where he played wide receiver. And he fumbled in the most detrimental of situations. Yet he was given money to stay in JAX while Arden Key, a pass rusher that we so badly need, was shown the door. Trent Baalke, I’ll let you field this one. Fat Tony Smith of 1010XL summed up the special teams best when he posted this tweet. “Missed FG (-3), blocked FG; Texans short field TD (-10 now -13 total) KO return (-7)…-20 total and they lost by 20.” It is impossible to sum it up any better. The special teams was anything but special.

There were so many key plays that went the other way that reversing one or two of them would have made no difference. Missed field goals, interceptions, fumbles, run backs, penalties negating first downs. The Jaguars ran the gamut of disgrace this past Sunday. The problem is not that the Jaguars lost to Houston, it was HOW they lost to Houston. This supposed playoff team is in complete disarray and as we stated earlier, even the Head Coach Doug Pederson has no answers. I will say this, two major offensive changes occurred from last year to this year. We added Calvin Ridley, and Press Taylor started calling the plays. You decide which of these two are causing the offense to play like utter and complete crap in 2023. I know my answer.

I’ll sum it all up for everyone. The Jaguars issues come down to the basics. It’s simply blocking and tackling, pitching and catching. Neither of our lines are blocking or tackling well and we need to throw the ball to our main receivers and stop trying to be tricky or cute. We are nowhere near good enough to run anything but the basics. Now, let’s end this trash with a couple of bright spots. ETN and Evan Engram were really good. That’s all I’ve got. Let me know your thoughts in the comment section below.