(09-26-2021, 06:08 PM)Bullseye Wrote: Caveat:  I missed about half of the first quarter.  Got a last second invite to watch the game with my best friend, and I succumbed to the lure of wings.  So from the 2nd Cardinals possession, I was listening on the radio.

My thoughts on what I saw...

1.      After two weeks, the Jaguars were surprisingly competent along the OL, only surrendering two sacks in that time frame.  Today, that largely continued against the Cardinals.  There was one unfortunate breakdown that led to the TL INT in the 2nd half, but I have to commend the OL overall for a good game.  Chandler Jones did not run rampant as I feared he might.

2.      So far, the lack of offensive balance has been the biggest complaint on offense.  The team hasn’t utilized James Robinson, and it has put Trevor Lawrence in bad situations, putting too much of the offensive burden on him.  With an explosive offense like the Cardinals, today represented a good opportunity to keep the ball on the ground to help negate Chandler Jones’ pass rush and to keep that offense off the field.  Fortunately for the Jaguars, they employed that strategy, and it was effective.  The first scoring drive in the second half, we had something like 7 runs in 8 plays.  I think this is the game where James Robinson earned the trust of Urban Meyer, and that will bode well for us in the future.

3.  Boneheaded penalty by 54.

4.  This is going to seem weird considering we gave up over 400 yards offense and 24 points defensively, but considering we were down two DBs, the defense held up relatively well.  We got our first turnover of the season and forced some punts.  We held the Cards to seven points at halftime and had the lead throughout the 3rd quarter.

5.  What s it going to take for receivers to hold onto TL’s passes?!?  While the drops were down this week compared  to the first two weeks, Hollister’s inability to hold onto a pass led directly to TL’s first INT and cost us points.  Considering Lambo’s struggles, a score was not guaranteed, but we were inside the Cards’ 15.   An extra 3 or 7 in this game could have been huge.  If we score then, maybe we don’t go for the flea flicker later.

6.  Special teams is close to being a real strength for this team.  Logan Cooke continues to boom the ball, and had a punt downed at the one.  Agnew is making an early bid for first quarter MVP, with his second kick return for a TD in as many weeks, this time with a 109 yard kick return of a 68 yard FG attempt right before half time.  Sadly, what is missing from special teams is any sort of competence from Josh Lambo, of all people.  Today, he missed two XPs for us/  Combined with the 3 missed FGs, he seems really in a bad mindset.  I’m not sure how much longer the team can stick with him missing these kicks like that.  Iven what he has done for us, I’d hate to cut him, but this team is not good enough to leave point off the board with his misses.
 
7.            Rookie Watch
              
A.            Trevor Lawrence-I attributed many of TLs struggles the first two weeks in large part to bad down and distance situations.  Too often, we’d be behind the sticks and TL would have to try low completion percentage passes.  Then we got behind on the scoreboard against Denver.  But we don’t habe that excuse to offer him today.  Today, we were in the lead for most of the first three quarters.  In fact, we were up by two scores in the 3rd quarter.  We ran the ball well, and we didn’t have a lot of dumb penalties keeping us hopelessly behind the sticks.  As I indicated above, I don’t fault him foi his first INT.  Hollister has to come up with that and not pop it up in the air.  But on the flea flicker, even acknowledging Watt came in unblockedm TL either has to eat that or get the pass out of bounds.  That INT was a backbreaker, especially coming off that Cardinals TD drive the series before.  On top of that, his pattern of streakiness continued, as in the second half, he had a stretch where he missed 4 straight passes.  He needs more consistency.   Not sure what happened on the first drive on 3rd down when Marvin Jones stopped and TL threw as if he expected Jones to keep running, but those sorts of things bring drives to a halt.

B.            Travis Etienne-DNP-IR

C.            Tyson Campbell-got extensive playing time today because of injuries to C.J. Henderson and Tre Herndon.  So today, he went up against the likes of DeAndre Hopkins, AJ Green, Christian kirk, and rookie Rondale Moore.  There were two plays that stuck out to me.  One on a shorter pass where he broke the pass up.  The other was on a deeper pass in the second half where green out positioned him for the ball, leaving me shaking my head in dismay.

D.            Walker Little-DNP.  Has been inactive all year; now out due to Covid issues.  When Cam Robinson came out with an injury in the 2nd half, Will Richardson came in.

E.            Andre Cisco-Did not see him play at all.

F.            Jay Tufele-DNP-inactive all year

G.           Jordan Smith-Inactive

H.            Luke Farrell-I thought he would get a start, but instead, Jacob Hollister seemed to get playing time.
 
8.              He gets a lot of crap thrown his way by fans, including myself, but give Wingard credit.  He made a nice play on the INT from start to finish.  He put himself in great position bracketing the WR deep, put himself in position to make the INT, actually made the play on the ball and held onto it, and made a decent return.

9.            Still don’t fully understand the RB rotation. 


10.          Bottom line:  While very few Jaguars fans (myself included) expected to win this game, the end results were, nevertheless, disappointing.  We controlled the game for the better part of three quarters.  With the first INT and the two missed extra points, we left anywhere between 5-9 points on the field.  Add the pick 6 that TL threw on the flea flicker, that’s a difference of 12-16 points in a game lost by 12.  In a season where I am looking for signs of progress, this game qualifies as such.  But the abiding sense is that this was a blown opportunity to get a win against a solid Cardinals team.  On to Cincy in a short week.  Hopefully, we can get a win against the Bengals.  But we have to stop turning the ball over, stop leaving points on the field, execute better, and continue to run thee ball.

Thank you for the great review as usual.

Regarding the parts in bold...

I just can't believe how Lambo has seemed to have just "lost it".  The guy used to be the most consistent player on the team the last couple of seasons.

Trevor Lawrence has been "so-so" in my opinion for much of the reasons that you stated.  There is no denying that the guy is talented and will eventually be a good QB.  I think he's going to need a few more games before everything starts kind of "slowing down" for him.  It's never wise to just throw a ball up like he did on the flea-flicker play.

I also don't quite get the RB rotation.  I may be off on this, but I think that they use Hyde way more than I thought they would.  It's almost like they don't have a "feature" back.  While Hyde had done decent, I feel like we should be feeding Robinson more.

---