The Jacksonville Jaguars were a game away from winning the AFC Championship game and advancing to the Super Bowl. Last year was truly a magical year for them because everybody had them finishing at the bottom of the AFC South, but they prevailed and won the division for the first time since everything realigned in 2002. That was last season, so what’s going on with this season? After a quick 2-0 start that I stated was a big-time win in the AFC title game rematch over the Patriots, they’ve struggled mightily in their last three games giving up 30 points to the Kansas City Chiefs, 41 points to the Dallas Cowboys and yesterday, they lost their third straight game at the hands of the Houston Texans. So… What’s wrong with the Jacksonville Jaguars?
First, you see how much Leonard Fournette means to this football team and one player’s absence can make all the difference. When he isn’t on the field, they are depending on Blake Bortles to take a game over with his arm but let’s be realistic here, he isn’t that type of quarterback and never will be. He isn’t the guy that can throw the football 45-50 times a game and the team wins. No, he’s not elite, but he can make a big throw when you need him too and he showed that in the playoffs last year, but expecting him to shred a defense like he’s Brady, Rodgers or Brees, that isn’t happening. Their formula all last season was to run the football, control the clock, dominate the line of scrimmage and play solid defense along with the offensive line completely dominating the line of scrimmage and winning the battle of the trenches up front. Bortles has played so poorly that he was benched in their last game against the Texans.
Coming into the year, I said that the Jaguars had the best defense in the league but the way they’ve been playing as of late, they’ve looked like one of the worst units in the game and to be honest, they’re soft because that’s exactly how they are playing and as a former defensive player myself, it pains me to even write that about a defense. As I look into more of their issues, Jalen Ramsey is also an issue with all of this and let me explain. Remember during the summer when he gave his overall breakdown of which quarterbacks are good and which aren’t? Why even worry about the others? Just focus on what’s going on within your locker room and the Jaguars clearly don’t have the leadership that I thought they did. Something like this would’ve been stopped if this were New England or many other locker rooms. This is when the veterans like Calais Campbell and Malik Jackson need to get control of this locker room.
