JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Urban Meyer saw plenty of good in another loss, but the Jaguars still can’t put things together for a full game.
The recurring theme — what is wrong with Jacksonville’s passing game, and can it be fixed this season?
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The short answer is probably not.
Jacksonville is down two receivers and now a tight end on an offense that was already treading water just to be average. It has tried to get meaningful snaps from players like Tavon Austin and Laquon Treadwell, but the deficiencies are magnified on what seems like a weekly basis as rookie quarterback Trevor Lawrence tries to create something vertically.
The Jaguars are 2-9 after a 21-14 loss to the Falcons on Sunday, and they’re facing a West Coast road trip this week against the high-powered Rams. While Jacksonville’s defense has made improvements this season, the offense has languished. The Jaguars haven’t scored more than 23 points in a game since Dec. 6, 2020, a 27-24 OT loss to the Vikings.
“There are so many positives to that game yesterday. You take away the turnover and penalties, which sounds … but a lot of positives,” Meyer said. “Third downs looked really good. … Someone asked me how Trevor played I thought he competed his tail off. … and I thought third downs were excellent. We did a lot of tempo on third downs. We got 18 snaps of you know a little bit more when he’s used to doing, going fast.”
Meyer highlighting the minor improvements is something that he’s had to learn to do more as the losses have mounted and pushed him into uncomfortable territory. He was 83-9 in seven seasons at Ohio State. In Jacksonville, the Jaguars have struggled to even remain competitive many weeks.
The familiar question — how can the passing game be this bad this deep into the season?
Teams don’t have to respect Jacksonville’s receivers and can largely play man-to-man defense and erase any sort of big play by the pass catchers.
“Pass game identity, we’re still not there,” Meyer said. “But it’s, you know, how can you get there when you’re with a rotation of receivers that we have right now.”
Coming into the season, Jacksonville felt solid about its top two pass catchers, DJ Chark and Marvin Jones Jr. Things have deteriorated since then. Chark broke his ankle in Week 4 and was lost for the season. Jones has been solid, but he’s more of a complementary piece and not a burner, something Meyer craves at the position.
Those concerns remain growing for Jacksonville’s beleaguered passing attack and the effects that it will have on Lawrence’s long-term development.
“We gotta fix it. Am I concerned? Sure. I’m concerned about everything. But that’s the reality of the game of football,” Meyer said. “The pass game part is about consistency and timing. And when you’re, like I said, to no one’s fault, when you have guys go down and you’re just kind of rolling through guys it’s a little more difficult on a quarterback. So yeah, it’s a problem.”
The news hasn’t been positive on the injury front. While Jacksonville added center Brandon Linder and tight end James O’Shaughnessy back from the injured list in Sunday’s game, it lost tight end Dan Arnold, possibly for the season.
Arnold is headed to injured reserve with an MCL injury suffered in Sunday’s loss. Meyer said that he wasn’t sure if the injury was season-ending for the team’s most productive tight end.
That’s the second major injury in as many weeks for the Jaguars. The team lost receiver/return man Jamal Agnew for the season in last week’s 30-10 loss to San Francisco.
And James Robinson remains less than full strength after heel and knee injuries. That’s the reason that Carlos Hyde was in the game during crunch time while Robinson remained on the sidelines.
“He’s still not 100%. You can see that on perimeter runs. And we felt like Carlos had a little more juice in his legs,” Meyer said.