JaguarsTalk: Los Angeles Chargers vs Jacksonville Jaguars
JT: Hope you Bolts didn’t skip leg day. A jaguar can pick up 700lbs+. Do you even lift, bro?
Oh I wish I had a good feeling about this one, but if I’m being honest Justin Herbert is one of the quarterbacks I’m hoping to grab in my fantasy league this year. Well that certainly wasn’t a positive way to begin this game analysis. Maybe honesty isn’t always the best policy. Let me begin again… Man this one might get ugly quickly with the likes of Keenan Allen, Mike Williams and Austin Ekeler running around. Sorry, I dun did it again. I will begin a third time and hopefully make this a much more positive Jaguars opening statement. Hey Jaguars fans, look at it this way, by the time game three comes around, Joey Bosa and Khalil Mack might be hurt. Guys, I’m grasping for straws here. I certainly don’t wish any player ill will, ever. This game is their livelihood so misfortune is not a thing I hope for. What I do hope for is extreme and extremely quick maturation from our new Jaguars team.
Week three, against quite possibly a deep playoff contending team, is one to circle on your calendar. This match-up will be a huge measuring stick for Jacksonville. The Los Angeles Chargers have it all. Well, they have most of it. Their QB is a young phenom. He throws the ball effortlessly and on the receiving end he’s got Allen, Williams, Ekeler, and Everett. On defense they have two premiere edge rushers in Bosa and Mack. Top of their class. Their names appear nowhere near “the plaque for the alternates [which is] down in the ladies room.” However, after drooling over the Chargers roster for some time you begin to see that they do have a few softer spots. There are a few areas of which the Jaguars may be able to take advantage. I believe that in order to come out of LA with a dubya, Pederson and his staff will need to put together a specific game plan to exploit the following weak spots. Trevor Lawrence and crew will have to execute flawlessly and put together a monster game. By flawless and monster I mean down right perfect. Let’s look at what we are dealing with in Jacksonville’s week three trip to the cereal state (the land of nuts and flakes).
First of all, SoFi stadium just looks amazing. I know Jacksonville is a small market team with a not so great history of winning but are there any stadium improvements we can make to The Bank to provide even an ounce of the wow factor of SoFi? I guess we should spend our money on winning first. When I say “our money” you know I don’t really mean…Look, I’m willing to chip in.
Okay the Chargers have many fortified positions and very few weak spots to exploit. If I were to hazard a guess, and that’s part of the job here at JaguarsTalk, I’d say that when the Chargers are on offense the Jaguars will have their hands full just keeping pace. And, gun to my head, where Jacksonville’s offense has a shot to win this game is up the middle, on the ground and with a dink and dunk passing game. Either way we are talking about a north/south mindset, no taking the ball wide and hoping to gain the corner, and certainly not by hanging in the pocket and stretching the field. The Chargers collect DBs like your great Aunt Bertha did Beanie Babies. The difference being their DBs will eventually pay off. In the offseason the Chargers signed a top free agent cornerback in J.C. Jackson and drafted three others. If you care to know who they are…JT Woods, safety out of Baylor. Um, this kid can fly. His NFL combine 40-yard dash was 4.36 seconds. They also took Ja’Sir Taylor, CB from Wake Forest and Deane Leonard, CB from Ole Miss. Neither of these guys will see much playing time outside of special teams, however the depth at the DB position for LAC is impressively good.
If we are not going to stretch the field and challenge their DBs then let’s talk about their front seven, the bread and butter of any great NFL team (if you disagree with us on this point then you should question literally everything in your life). This is where I think a chink in the LAC armor may exist. Listen, I’m looking for a needle in a haystack here so work with me. The Chargers defense wasn’t great last year, ranking 29th in the league and allowing 27 ppg. We can certainly work with that. The problem is, like Jax, they were not stingy with the wallet in the offseason. In addition to the $82.5 million they dropped for DB J.C. Jackson to play opposite Asante Samuel, Khalil Mack got more money than I will see in a lifetime. LAC now has two pro-bowl sack masters. Two fear inducing, offensive tackle destroying, edge rushing beasts. As if Joey Bosa alone weren’t enough to worry opposing offenses.
It’s a given to say that the Jaguars offense must take the Chargers edge rush out of the equation. If Jax can account for either Bosa or Mack then the Jags have a shot at 4 yards and a cloud of dust. This is why, after shoring up the Jacksonville defensive front seven, Baalke and Pederson focused on the offensive line. Luke Fortner and the addition of ex-Redskin/WFT/Comman… (I just threw up in my mouth a little), Brandon Scherff will be there to give Lawrence enough time to get off a short pass and/or give Etienne, Robinson and Snoop D-O-double G enough of a hole to get to the second level (I am completely forgetting about Ryquell Armstead and I shouldn’t. I apologize). Any combination of Cam Robinson, Ben Bartch, Walker Little, Luke Fortner, Tyler Shatley, Brandon Scherff and Jawaan Taylor is a formula for a fiercely formidable front five (alliteration, and it feels so good. Sung to the tune of Reunited by our besties, Peaches & Herb). I get that there is no way to stop Bosa and Mack on every play. Hell, LAC acquired Mack so the pair of them could deal with QBs the likes of Patrick Mahomes, Russell Wilson, and to a lesser extent Derek Carr. Two of those three are headed to Canton. Lawrence can’t hang with that crowd just yet, but what Jacksonville can do is game plan intelligently. Avoid Bosa and Mack altogether by hitting it up the gut and incorporating screens, and slants, anything with a three step drop maximum that gets the ball out of Trevor’s hands immediately. Home runs are not needed in this game, patience is. Our offensive line is good enough for three or four yards per play if we don’t drop back and dance around behind the line of scrimmage. The Chargers defense calls for a hard nosed, north-south, smash mouth Jaguars offense. Throw in an occasional play where Etienne and Engram are split wide on a linebacker just to keep LAC honest. Jacksonville won’t score a ton of points this way but with their own newly revamped defense, they hopefully won’t have to. I just realized how much this column is free-flowing thought instead of neatly organized analysis, so just go with it.
Speaking of the newly revamped Jax defense, they need to account for Allen, Williams, and Ekeler. Jacksonville might not have DBs for days like LAC. They might not have starting corners the likes of Asante Samuel or J.C. Jackson, but they have a lot of speed in their secondary. To stop the Chargers offense, the Jaguars defensive schemes need to be confusing as all get out (like the first time I watched the movie, Inception. Also the second time). Herbert isn’t a rookie. He has the ability to scramble and make things happen ala Steve Young, Brett Favre and Patrick Mahomes, but he is still young in this league and can be confused by great defensive schemes. Jacksonville’s backers are very very fast and Mike Caldwell will use this speed along with his experience of 24 NFL years, three as a linebackers coach with the Super Bowl champion Bucs, to get to Herbert quickly. The defensive scheme only needs to confuse the young LAC QB for a second or two. I am most worried about what LAC can do down the field in longer passing scenarios than I am their short game. We here at JaguarsTalk feel that the Jax front seven can very competently handle their pitch and putt. We are most concerned with our cornerbacks covering Allen and the towering Williams during their tee shots. For this reason Jacksonville needs to force the Chargers into using the exact same offensive game plan that Jacksonville itself voluntarily wants to play. I have made a delicious word salad with this entire column so I will try to sum up my feelings in the next few sentences.
The Jaguars don’t have the receiver talent against LACs DBs or the offensive line talent against Mack and Bosa to allow enough time for Lawrence to take five and seven step drops. Because of this the Jags need to attack the middle of the field with short, quick developing plays. Up the gut runs, slants, screens, anything with a quick release that doesn’t give LACs edge rushers enough time to get to Trevor Lawrence. It is a slow, methodical, low scoring, boring offensive game plan that will put the layperson to sleep. On the defense, Jacksonville does not have the CB talent to continually cover Allen, Williams, and Ekeler, if Herbert is given time to sit in the pocket and have a sandwich. Thus, Jacksonville’s defensive scheme must confuse the young QB long enough to allow the Jags front seven (it always seems to come back to these guys) to use their speed to hurry Herbert. The Jags backers only need an extra second to get to Herbert. If they can achieve that, it will take the long pass out of the Chargers arsenal and force them to keep everything within 5-10 yards of the line of scrimmage, which is where Jacksonville’s defensive strength lies. Essentially Jacksonville wants both teams to be playing with the same offensive scheme in order for the Jags to have the best shot at winning. I have completely repeated myself and will now need to go back through this column and heavily edit half of it out. I’m realizing that the stream of consciousness method may not be the best way to write an article.
Bottom lining this game is simple. Jax has a shot if they play perfect ball and LAC doesn’t. Luck will be needed for the Jags to leave SoFi with a week three win. These columns would be much easier to write if our boys had a few games under their collective belt so I could see their progress or lack thereof. But that is half the fun of predicting things based on a couple of padless OTAs. The other half is waiting for the call from Mr. Khan about my position with the organization.
Prediction: Los Angeles Chargers 27 - Jacksonville Jaguars 20
Disagree? Agree? Don’t care at all? Let us know in the comment section below.