JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – If the Jaguars running game is going to get on track this season they may not have a better opportunity than Sunday against the Oakland Raiders. After only gaining 54 yards on 20 carries (2.7 yards per carry) during last week’s win against Chicago, Gus Bradley challenged his offensive line to fix what’s been a season long issue.
“I think it is painting a clearer picture to them,” said Bradley. “What is the truth? I think there is a lot of attention being drawn on the run game and surely they feel that part of it. You want them to pay attention to it, but you don’t want them to be full of anxiety over it as well, so I think it is a fine line.”
Heading into week seven on the NFL schedule the Jaguars have the worst running game in the league (71 yards per game). On Sunday they’ll be facing a Raiders defense that is ranked 30th in the NFL against the run and 24th in points allowed.
The running game the Jaguars have displayed through five games looks nothing like the one that dominated at times during the preseason. Injuries are partially to blame. Running back Chris Ivory is still working his way back from an undisclosed medical issue, which caused him to miss the first two games of the season. With Luke Joeckel out for the season with a knee injury the offensive line is still working to develop chemistry with Patrick Omameh at left guard.
“Yeah, like I said, did not foresee that right now that this would be one of our issues,” said Jaguars offensive coordinator Greg Olson. “Again, as a coaching staff we’re kind of exhausting all possibilities right now and making sure we understand the importance of it. Certainly got to be an important part of what we’re trying to accomplish here offensively and for this team. That’s something that we’re just continuing to look at. We felt like we made obviously progress over in London and again we took a step backwards last week. So it’s the consistency that we’ve talked about as an offense overall going into this season.”
Explosive plays have been lacking from the Jaguars offense in both the run and pass game. Jacksonville is averaging 5.10 yards per play and they’ll be facing an Oakland defense that’s giving up an eye-popping 6.9 yards per play.
Establishing the run will also open up the play action pass game, which has been absent from the Jaguars offense.
“I think it’s a continual effort. We know it’s there,” said Jaguars quarterback Blake Bortles. “We ran for 100-plus yards against Indy. We have the ability to do it, we’ve shown that, it’s just about finding the consistency. We’ve added a couple extra things, doing a couple extra things in walkthrough and the running game. Kind of paying a little more close attention to it to get it going, get it started because we know we have the ability to. We have the backs and the guys up front that can create holes and make plays.”