‘Great Opportunites To Teach’: Learning How To Finish Games Is the Next Step for the Jaguars
The Jaguars’ offense found its spark in Week 6 on a bounce-back effort by Trevor Lawrence, where he rushed for two touchdowns and threw for another while playing idle football for the first time in three weeks. The Jaguars also got significant contributions from their rushing attack, allowing them flexibility in their game calls and keeping the Colts’ defense on their heels all afternoon. Despite these positive developments, this was not reflected in the Victory Column.
Unlike their week two encounter, the Colts came to play and emerged victorious in a 34-27 dogfight that featured a classic performance from Matt Ryan and a dominant performance from Michael Pittman Jr.
From the Jaguars’ perspective, that loss reduced to one stop towards the end of the fourth quarter. Quarterback Trevor Lawrence put the Jags ahead with less than three minutes to go and found a wide open Christian Kirk in the end zone to make it a 27-26 ball game. That didn’t deter the Colts, who scored the winning touchdown in the final 23 seconds of that contest and handed the Jaguars their fourth loss of the season.
Put simply, the Jaguars need to find a way to win these close fights. Head Coach Doug Pederson made it clear that this is something the team needs to improve on and learn from as the season progresses.
“Yeah, I mean, look, that’s one of the things we talk about a lot, it’s the ending, right? Credit them,” Pederson said.
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“Their game plan was obviously not to hunker down so much and try to play a little tempo and get the ball out quickly. Try to eliminate some of your pass rush this way. They did a good job with that. Our boys fought for 60 minutes. We just have to find a time, a place, a game where we can win these games. It’s obviously an opportunity to do that and our guys will be better. We’ll be better if we go. Great opportunities to teach.”
For the Jaguars players, the inability to finish the Colts game has rightfully upset them and put them on the same page as the coaching staff when it comes to working on ways to improve their crunch-time game. For quarterback Trevor Lawrence, there is hope that player frustration can lead to a determination to take the next step.
“Yeah, obviously it is — we’ve had a few of those this year, so it’s frustrating,” Lawrence said. “It’s difficult. Not that frustrating, just those are the games – we feel like we could have won every game we’ve been in this year. That’s the NFL though, so there are a lot of teams that do that At the end of the day it’s all about winning or losing so keep finding ways to finish those games and win Yes obviously there will be a lot to learn today There were some interesting situations , who I think have players everywhere that we can handle better.
But the Jaguars are still finding out. Just like their other three losses this season, they’re left wondering what went wrong in key situations and how to fix it.
“There were some difficult situations and at the end of the day I think we took a big step on the offensive. What was that, 20 game drive at the end just the confidence that was in that huddle it was cool to see. I just don’t want to be in there next to anyone else. I’m just proud of these guys,” Lawrence said. “We’ve made some big plays defensively too. It’s really just up to all of us to find ways to execute them better. I know we had a drive offensively , where I missed a big throw in third place on the plus 40 or so It was really the plus 30, 32 yard line on the third down, Christian (Kirk) has to hit that line, so there are plays, over that you think about and knock yourself over and that’s how we can all get better and position ourselves Go win it, don’t just be close.
“It’s frustrating. I really believe in the team we have. I know that no matter who we play against, we have that confidence that we can win and obviously that’s huge. Ultimately we have to go and win those games .” and we know that. There are a lot of things we can learn from and get better at. We’re obviously absorbing it and emotions are running high. The most important thing is that we stick together. We’re all in this together. No matter what the outcome was, we all have our part and we need to look in the mirror, pretty much the same thing we said last week and address it and move on this week.