Jaguars vs Colts

JT: Indianapolis comes riding into The Bank

JaguarsTalk has been reviewing clips from week ones Indianapolis Colts / Houston Texans game. We have read expert opinions and, frankly, many pseudo expert opinions. We gathered all of this information, threw it in a Ninja and hit the smoothie button. Out poured this article. Sunday’s game will be a very interesting matchup between two teams who both know they are better than they played last week. Two teams that should be sitting 1-0 and topping the AFC South heading into their week-two matchup. Instead, neither team has a check in the win column, and they play each other for early season control of the AFC South. Any team can beat any other team, any week in today’s NFL, but JaguarsTalk will jump out on a limb here to say that the Texans are not going to beat an angry Russell Wilson, who feels he has something to prove after Denver’s embarrassing loss to Seattle last week. Nor is it a stretch to assume that Tennessee won’t be leaving Buffalo with a dubya this week. If these two prognostications prove correct, that means Jacksonville holds the fate of the AFC South lead in its own hands. The Jaguars can walk away from TIAA Bank Field this Sunday atop the division that they have for so long struggled to win, or come in second, or third. It’s like a scene from Talladega Nights. If you're not first, you’re [Jacksonville]. Well, not anymore Ricky Bobby, not anymore. The Jaguars will be coming after the Colts this weekend like a Spider Monkey - all jacked up on Mountain Dew.

Jacksonville is coming off the most impressive loss this team has had in years. Follow me on this. Jacksonville garnered 383 total yards Sunday. Trevor Lawrence was responsible for 275 of those yards and a touchdown. We don’t want to count his late game interception, but we have to as it was on third down and thus cannot be counted as a desperation heave. It was instead what Head Coach Doug Pederson called, a “correctable mistake.” The Jaguars offense suffered only one three and out drive in game one and got into the Washington red zone five times. Kicker Riley Patterson hit three of four field goals and running back James Robinson left no doubt that he is 110% healed from his nasty Achilles injury, suffered last December. JAX ate clock, had multi-play, sustained drives, ran and passed the ball at will, and had a hefty lead in the fourth quarter. Plus, nobody got injured. All of these things are notable improvements over the Jaguar teams of the past two years. Monstrous steps forward by anyone's estimation. Even the following negatives can be seen as positives. 

Even with all of their trips to the Washington red zone the Jaguars couldn’t punch it in the endzone. T-Law overthrew Travis Etienne and Etienne dropped a pass. Both of those were guaranteed touchdowns, yet Jacksonville still led in the fourth quarter. Imagine if those “correctable mistakes” were indeed corrected. Trevor Lawrence held the ball too long in the pocket resulting in unnecessary sacks, two intentional grounding calls, hurries, knockdowns and batted balls. He needed to run through his progressions more quickly. Imagine if this “correctable mistake” was fixed. Pre-snap and roughing the passer penalties gave Washington a touchdown last week and stalled some Jags drives. This is just a pure discipline issue which is most certainly correctable. So once again, imagine if Jacksonville’s coaching staff corrected these problems. If none of these “correctable mistakes” occurred last week then Jacksonville would be sitting alone atop the AFC South right now because they would have dominated the Commanders. Now imagine, if you will, a team coming to TIAA Bank Field with a similar quarterback but a better running game. This team has a very similar passing game, but their defensive line is not quite as ferocious. Couple this knowledge with home field advantage (may or may not be a thing in Jacksonville quite yet) and the possibility that just one “correctable mistake” from above was corrected. If this scenario rings true, Jacksonville should beat Indianapolis. Now imagine if the Jags corrected two or three or all of their “correctable mistakes” this week in practice. This being the case, JAX should dominate the time of possession and take full advantage of every redzone trip. It will be a mighty victory for the once hapless big cats.

Jonathan Taylor is who stands in the Jaguars way. This is Taylor’s third NFL season and last year he led the entire league in yards rushed, 1,811 with 18 touchdowns. This year he led every fantasy league as the number one overall draft pick, and last week he led the Colts with 161 yards and one touchdown on a whopping 31 carries. Indianapolis tied their game with Houston 20-20, but yet in coming from behind the Colts opted to put the game on Jonathan Taylor’s shoulders instead of newly acquired quarterback Matt Ryan. This is a signal that while Ryan and WR Michael Pittman Jr. are good, Taylor is the team. Stop Taylor and you stop the Colts. Here comes the JaguarsTalk broken record. Jacksonville’s defense was built specifically to stop Jonathan Taylor and Derrick Henry. This game, right here right now (Jesus Jones style), is where the rubber meets the road. There is no more warm-up, no more easing into things, it’s put up or shut up for the Jaguar defense. Week two will bring the noise and now is the time Jacksonville gets to see if they have the right players to silence the opposition.

Jacksonville’s defensive lineman Roy Robertson-Harris recognizes the job before them. In talking about Jonathan Taylor he said, “there are so many things he does well. He’s patient then he has explosion to get through the gap. He runs with power.” Our defense needs to plug those offensive line holes and they need to be patient. Don’t over commit, stay in your lanes and swarm to Taylor. Just keep the Colts running back under 100 yards rushing and you will have given your team the chance it needs to win the game. Last year, when the Jags beat the Colts in the regular season finale, Taylor was held to 77 yards. As a point of comparison, last week Taylor gained 70 yards on Houston in the fourth quarter alone. The moral of this story is stay patient (Taylor waits for his hole to open up), keep your composure, stay in your lane, and don’t arm tackle this guy.

I guess I should spend a little time discussing the Colts defense. They have DeForest Buckner, a very good defensive tackle. Their edge rushers got a couple sacks last week against the Texans. Julian Blackmon and Stephon Gilmore anchor their DB crew and they are very good at what they do. The issue is that much like the Jaguars offense last week the Colts defense didn’t really show their full potential. There is a good chance that Trevor Lawrence will see the Colts A-game this Sunday. All of that being said, I still think the Colts defense is comparable to Washington’s. The Commanders have one of the best defensive lines even without Chase Young and the Washington secondary is just as adept as that of Indianapolis. If Jacksonville can eliminate the stupid offensive penalties and T-Law can make quicker decisions, then I don’t see Jacksonville having any more issues in week two against Indy than they did in week one at Washington.

In summary, Matt Ryan doesn’t bring that much improvement to a Colts team that the Jags dominated last year, when Jacksonville was 1/3 the team they are today. Big money was spent on Doug Pederson and his coaching staff precisely to coach the team through those “correctable mistakes” they made in week one. Jacksonville’s defense was tailor made to stop Jonathan Taylor. I guess you could say they were “Taylor” made (I sincerely apologize, that will never happen again. On the bright side I now understand the TaylorMade golf brand slogan). The name of the game is hold Jonathan Taylor under 100 yards rushing. It’s going to be the name of most games Jacksonville plays this season, because they are a run stopping defense. Week two is when we find out if Foye Olulokun, Fatukasi, Travon Walker, Devin Lloyd, and Josh Allen are who they say they are. I want to see Frank Reich, Head Coach of the Colts, doing his best impression of Dennis Green during the post-game press conference. Jacksonville’s run defense is who we thought they were… Dominating.

JaguarsTalk did a preview of this weekend's game back on May 19th, shortly after the NFL schedules were announced. In that game we thought the Colts would jump out to an early lead and maintain it throughout the game, winning 20-10. We would like to amend that prediction after seeing the Jags ability to comeback from a significant deficit against Washington. We predict some back and forth in the scoring department. We also predict that Travis Etienne Jr. will have a monster game after his subpar performance in Washington. The Jaguars will pull off the upset (Colts are favored by 3.5) giving new Head Coach Doug Pederson his first Jacksonville victory at home, 27-17. 

Let us know your predictions in the comment section below.