The Jacksonville Jaguars blew it in the AFC Championship in January. They had a 20-10 lead in the fourth quarter and gifted the New England Patriots a trip to the Super Bowl. Yes, the Patriots were fortunate that Myles Jack was ruled down on what could’ve been a game-clinching touchdown, but the Jaguars let New England into the game by playing scared.
The Jaguars didn’t play scared vs. the Patriots this time around
The Jaguars learned from their AFC Championship timidity.
“We kinda got complacent and conservative. And I think that’s why we lost,” Jaguars cornerback Jalen Ramsey told GQ over the summer.
Now it’s a new season and the Jaguars are trying to make things right. In Week 2, they showed they learned from those mistakes and it’s why they pulled out a 31-20 win.
Lesson 1: Keep bringing the heat on defense
The Jaguars defense is a quarterback’s nightmare. It leans on a pass rush that had 55 sacks in 2017 and a secondary that has Pro Bowlers Ramsey and A.J. Bouye at both cornerback spots.
But Jacksonville’s elite defense dialed back its patented aggressiveness to avoid the big play in January, and it allowed Tom Brady to slowly pick them apart. That wasn’t the case Sunday.
The Jaguars kept calling for blitzes, stuck to man coverage, and it worked.
D.J. Hayden killed one fourth quarter drive for the Patriots with a sack of Brady that came on a corner blitz. Dante Fowler ended another drive with a strip sack.
There’s a reason teams switch to prevent. Aggressiveness can lead to quick scores, like the Patriots’ 29-yard touchdown late in the fourth quarter.
But the Jaguars stuck to their defensive identity and it worked more often than not.
Lesson 2: Keep stretching the field with Blake Bortles
The offense became a painfully predictable mess in the AFC Championship with runs on every first down, and throws on every third down.
“I think in crunch time moments, like last year’s playoff game — not as a team, because we would have trusted [Bortles] — but I think as an organization, we should have trusted him more to keep throwing it,” Ramsey told GQ. “We started running it on first and second down, throwing it on third down, every single time we were out there. [The Patriots] caught on to that.”
This time, even with the game seemingly under wraps and the Jaguars up 11 in the fourth quarter, Bortles was still throwing deep. It even took the Patriots by surprise, at times. On the last drive of the game, the Jaguars connected on a 22-yard pass up the right sideline against a Patriots defense that assumed the offense would be running the clock out.
Earlier in the fourth quarter, a pass to Dede Westbrook out of a shotgun formation burned the Patriots for a 61-yard touchdown.
Like the prevent defense, there’s a double-edged sword that comes with throwing late. Incompletions stop the clock, and mistakes give opponents life.
The Jaguars had a pair of turnovers in the second half that threatened to give the Patriots a chance at a comeback.
But Jacksonville won because it stuck to the way the big lead was built the first place. And that was via the arm of Bortles, who finished with 377 passing yards and four touchdowns. It helped too that Bortles ran for 35 yards — something that Patriots coach Bill Belichick warned was a danger earlier this week.
The Jaguars shied away from the big moment in January, but this time it looked like a team ready to take on every Goliath in its path.
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