by The Jaguars’ 38-10 victory over the Chargers on Sunday was one of the most exciting stories in football. And not just for some desperate regents out there in the Big Ten contemplating making an absolutely chaotic decision at their head coach’s position, or a medical malpractice attorney wondering why in the bloody hell Justin Herbert was in a lost game without his pro Bowl left tackle back with 28 points.
Jacksonville 2-1.
A week ago, the Jaguars shut out the Colts, who upset the undefeated Chiefs. While it’s important for us not to get caught up in the fog of transition ownership, the point is that, so far, Jacksonville looks like a team that can compete in the upper echelons of the NFL.
Pederson, who won a Super Bowl with the Eagles, faces his former team next Sunday.
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Trevor Lawrence throws a football like a generation player. His touchdown pass to Zay Jones in the second quarter showcased nearly all the reasons he was considered a perfect cut-second candidate: mobility, decision-making and scanning progress smoother than a nozzle on a 3-D printer. Mike Caldwell, the team’s defensive coordinator, leads one of the most efficient defensive units in the NFL. The Chargers were held to 2.2 yards per carry, with Austin Ekeler gaining just five yards on four carries. They currently rank No. 1 in the NFL in opponent field goal percentage at 27.8%. For perspective, five NFL teams are allowing a 50% rushing success rate or better than their opponents.
So it gets us thinking: How does the balance of power across the league change if this team is actually real? Who would have expected that next week’s game, when coach Doug Pederson returns to Philadelphia, would be little more than a litmus test of how willing Philadelphians are to snub the man who brought them their only Lombardi Trophy? Who released a Week 10 Jaguars-Chiefs game for any non-fantasy football purpose?
We can’t speak for anyone else, but when the Jaguars buried themselves so deep in Urban Meyer’s experimental era last year, we began to ask fair (at the time) questions about the rest of the roster by correlation. While it was somewhat easy to separate the problem from the solution, that didn’t mean there wasn’t collateral damage in the court of public opinion.
Looking at Lawrence now, we can talk about how miraculous it was that the No. 1 pick in 2021 survived at all. But at the time, didn’t the abysmal coaching situation leave little doubt that perhaps Lawrence himself was decidedly overmatched or somehow unprepared for the NFL? That it wasn’t just Meyer’s machinations and this broken offense?
General manager Trent Baalke’s offseason plan included spending good money on a wide receiver, a veteran offensive lineman and drafting versatile, chess-playing defensive players in the early rounds, as if the Jaguars were one win away from the playoffs before a time. In fact, one could argue that Jacksonville was a bit of a ship without a direction. Now? Baalke’s moves make sense and the way he assembled the roster wasn’t as bad as it turned out.
It was not so simple to believe a year ago. Bad coaches have a way of tearing a franchise apart. They linger on the walls like a thick smoke smell years after they have been removed and fresh paint applied. A year ago, the Jaguars were here for show and laughs. We put them in the back of our minds like the penguin in Toy Story and allowed them to gather dust while we got excited about other young rising stars in the league.
Of course, it’s better to make room in our collective consciousness for another team that could potentially, in the next few years, be considered a Super Bowl contender instead of a perennial snake hoping to devour another No. 1 draft pick.
The AFC we envisioned in our heads has already taken some hard left turns, steeped in the inevitable chaos that is the first quarter of the NFL season. We welcome the Jaguars to the fold. It’s a better place with them than without.
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