November 8, 2024 • 35 mins
What if the Jacksonville Jaguars' offense could unlock its true potential with a few strategic tweaks? Join James in this episode as he flies solo, dissecting the Jaguars' 28-23 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles. With co-host Phil Barrera taking a break, James takes you on a rollercoaster ride through the emotional landscape of being a Jaguars fan. Get ready to explore the highs and lows of the game, including key plays, standout performances, and the challenges faced by the team.
We highlighted the roles of Tank Bigsby and Travis Etienne, examining how their distinct skills could reshape the Jaguars' offensive tactics. Whether it's Bigsby's ability to break tackles or Etienne's potential in the short passing game, James discusses how these players could be pivotal in overcoming the Jaguars' current offensive challenges. Plus, the importance of integrating new talent like Brian Thomas Jr. into the mix is highlighted, bringing fresh energy and options to the playbook.
On the defensive side, James doesn't hold back in critiquing how their offseason additions have come up short. The episode shines a light on the tough matchups against Eagles stars like Saquon Barkley and Jalen Hurts, exposing the Jaguars' defensive vulnerabilities. With a keen eye, James dissects the team's execution issues, especially in critical moments, offering insights into the changes needed for a brighter Jaguars future. Whether you're a die-hard fan or new to the game, this episode promises a deep dive into the intricacies of the Jaguars' current season trajectory.
James Johnson and Phil Barrera bring you the best and most up to date Jacksonville Jaguars news. "Touchdown Jaguars!" is a tribute to the prospective ownership group "Touchdown Jacksonville!" In 1991, the NFL announced plans to add two expansion teams and "Touchdown Jacksonville!" announced its bid for a team, and Jacksonville was ultimately chosen as one of five finalists. In November 1993, the NFL owners voted 26–2 in favor of awarding the 30th franchise to Jacksonville. James and Phil have been fans of the franchise ever since and have had the honor (and sometimes dishonor) of covering the team professionally since 2017. The rest as they say, is history.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
The Touchdown Jacksonville 109 yards
Incredible, incredible.
Play action Upstairs wide open.
Tommy Bohannon, touchdownJacksonville Looking for Jimmy
(00:54):
in the end zone.
Touchdown Jaguars.
Touchdown Jaguars.
Touchdown Jaguars.
Welcome to the TouchdownJaguars podcast.
Here are your hosts, jamesJohnson and Phil Smith.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Touchdown
(01:16):
Jaguars podcast for episode 101.
I am your host for today.
Ryan is solo here for thisepisode.
Uh, james Johnson, as you allknow, I'm normally joined by my
cohost, phil Smith, or, excuseme, phil Barrera.
Sorry for butchering that.
Um, we all know he had tochange in last name but my
(01:39):
cohost, phil Barrera, um, foreach episode, but this week uh
actually had to.
He took a little bit of avacation this weekend and made a
trip to Dallas.
So, with all of the travelingand whatnot going on, I just
told him I'll hold it down forthis episode and I mean, you
know, when you're dealing withthe Jacksonville Jaguars, you
(02:00):
need a break, right?
So that break was certainlywell deserved and and um, I, I
totally, you know, get a little,taking a little time out to uh,
take care of yourself and allof that good stuff.
And, quite frankly, he probablysaved himself some heartache,
some anxiety.
You know, um, he also didn'twaste his time because obviously
(02:24):
, uh, the of the JacksonvilleJaguars last game, which they
fell to the Philadelphia Eagles28 to 23, wasn't what we wanted,
of course.
Now you know we'll get into theactual meat and potatoes and
the nuts and bolts of the gameitself and how it went down.
(02:47):
And you know the Jaguars didshow some fight and all that
good stuff.
But at the end of the day an Lis an L and there are no moral
victories in the NFL.
But going back to Phil, yeah,he definitely saved himself.
You know, some time that hecouldn't get back by missing the
game and we will discuss all ofthat in today's episode.
(03:08):
So the hope is to keep this onebrief, because I don't want to
really edit it, have a lot toedit and what have you.
So the hope is to keep this onebrief.
We'll get right into it here.
As always, before we talk aboutthe actual game and review the
game itself, we take the timeout in the beginning of the show
to plug our handles for our newlisteners and if you are a new
(03:32):
listener, welcome to thetouchdown jaguars platform.
Um, we hope that you stickaround for many, many more
episodes.
And then to um, those who havebeen listening for years, even
before we were, to touchdownjaguars podcast.
We appreciate you as well.
Of course, like I was about tosay, we plug our handles in the
(03:53):
beginning of each episode.
You can follow me atsportsgrind underscore done on
twitter.
You can follow phil at phil thefil Filipino on Twitter.
Our podcast handle istdjaguarspod and our official
website is touchdownjaguarscom,where you can go to find
archived episodes and writtencontent.
(04:16):
Of course, we are on all ofyour major podcasting platforms
Apple Music, apple Podcasts,spotify, google Play, you name
it and if we aren't there, feelfree to let us know and we'll,
you know, do our best to get ontheir platform so we can keep
you informed on the JacksonvilleJaguars from a week to week
(04:39):
basis and keep you in the loopwith your favorite team.
And also, I want to give a shoutout to our longtime sponsor in
SeatGeek, who you can go to foryour ticketing needs when it
comes to any major event.
Of course, we cover sports,most specifically the NFL,
(05:01):
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Feel free to check them out.
So that includes the rest ofthe NFL, as I said MLB, which of
course the MLB season is over,the NBA, mls, you name it.
They have you covered there atSeatGeek.
And also we have you covered asa first-time user.
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You can go in.
We have a promotion code andthat's touchdown jaguars in
which you can use to saveyourself $20 off your first
order at SeatGeek again, that'stouchdown jaguars and you'll
save yourself $20.
You know, flip that, spin ittowards gas, whatever the case
may be, and save yourself somemoney.
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So they got you covered withall your sports needs, just, not
not only your sports ticketingneeds, but as well as your
concerts and your music relatedstuff.
They got you covered there aswell.
Feel free to check them out.
Seatgeekcom, of course, is thewebsite, and you can download
the SeatGeek app.
Regardless, our promotion codewill work either way and you
(06:10):
also not only save yourself somemoney, but, you know, help us
keep the lights on, so to speak,here at the Touchdown Jaguars
podcast and, as promised, wewill go ahead and get right into
the show.
As the jacksville jaguars fellto the philadelphia eagles this
sunday, I would in what wassupposed to be a primetime game
(06:32):
initially, but it gotrescheduled to a four o'clock
game, and I mean it was.
I will say this it wasentertaining.
Um, it would have been a goodsunday night football game, as
opposed to what we got.
I think that was the Colts andthe other team is blanking out
on me.
It was the Colts and somebodyelse.
Let me check on the littleschedule here.
(06:52):
Bear with me y'all and theVikings, that's who.
It was the Vikings.
That game went down by a scoreof 21-13 in favor of the Vikings
.
But we're not here to talk aboutthem.
Instead, we're here to talkabout the jacksonville jaguars.
And before we get into the gameitself, which has a lot of
talking points, we'll get intothat.
(07:14):
But, um, of course we'll gothrough the box score here, as
we always do.
Uh, trevor lawrence was 16 of31 for 169 yards.
He did have two picks We'lldiscuss both of those, because
those are two key talking pointsas well and he had two Russian
touchdowns.
So, you know, while he had somepicks, he also, you know, was
(07:38):
the reason the Jaguars were ableto get some points on the board
offensively.
And then, in terms of therussian statistics you know it
wasn't all that pretty and greatin terms of the russian
statistics uh, travis etn,returning from his hamstring
injury, had uh, three carriesfor 24 yards, while you know,
the average was, uh, eight yardsper carry.
(08:00):
He didn't necessarily help theteam on the scoring side of
things.
St Bigsby had eight carries for22 yards good for 2.8 yard per
carry rate.
And then also Trevor Lawrencehe had five carries, only had
eight yards, but again, the keywith him is he had two rushing
(08:20):
touchdowns along the way.
Then, receiving wise, it wasEvan Ingram leading the way.
Again, you know, and this isgoing to be one of the talking
points the offense didn't reallyhave a lot of juice, especially
in the beginning of the game.
But Evan Ingram, with fivecarries, or, excuse me, five
receptions for 45 yards, wasn'tsuper effective in terms of his
(08:42):
impact.
Parker Washington threereceptions for 41 yards.
Of course he saw a lot of timeon the field as an offensive
player because of the injuriesthat we previously endured,
which he handles a lot of kickreturn and punt return duties,
but this week he had to step inand help as much as he could On
(09:03):
the offensive side.
Austin Trammell, also called upfrom well, I won't say also,
but called up from the practicesquad and also had to help this
receiving group that is bangedup at the moment.
As we all know, christian Kirkis out for the season due to a
shoulder injury that hesustained, but Austin Trammell,
with two catches for 40 yardsand, uh, brian Thomas only had
(09:28):
two catches for 22 yards, which,again, that is another talking
point for this episode.
So, before we get into thedefensive side of the ball,
let's go ahead and discuss.
You know what happenedoffensively and I think you know
I just wrote in my notes hereum, I've seen the game, of
course, I saw it live and then,um, I saw like half of it again
(09:51):
in a re-watch and, um, you know,one of the notes that you know
I came away with here issomething that I just mentioned,
and it was just, you know,another slow start that we've
seen, you know, plague theJaguars, um, all this season and
you, you know, even before, butanother slow start for them
offensively and I believe we canattribute that to you know,
(10:12):
it's not rocket science, eventhough the offensive coordinator
and, you know, the Jaguarscoaching staff kind of try and
make it that way, but I feellike it's probably not rocket
science of why they arestruggling early and it's just a
matter of you know they got toget to their stars early in the
game and they got to highlighttheir stars early in the game.
(10:33):
I mean, you know, I just readoff Brian Thomas Jr's highlights
, or, excuse me, his statisticsand he only had two catches on
the whole night.
So, um, that in itself speaksfor itself.
But they, you know, they got toget to him and your go-to guys
that you've um been able togenerate offense through your
(10:53):
brian thomas juniors of theworld, uh, your tank bigs bees
of the world.
You know, and I know there'sbeen controversy where doug came
out to say like, hey, traTravis Etienne is our starter,
although Tank Biggs leads theleague, or was leading the
league at one point in yards percarry.
He had to come out and clearthat up and say, hey, travis is
(11:14):
still the starter and Evan Egramis the other one you have to
get to as well.
I mean, this is a guy that hadrecord numbers as a tight end
last year.
But I think that's really thekey for the Jacksonville Jaguars
getting themselves out of theseslow starts, and you would
think they would have picked upon that by now, but obviously
they haven't.
Kind of going back to the TankBigsby thing and the Travis
(11:37):
Etienne thing is one thing Ithink that could help them in
terms of getting this offensegoing.
If you're going to start thegame off running the ball a lot,
or you're going to start thisgame off or any game off for
that matter leaning on the rungame, you definitely need to
have Tate Bigsby as your starterfor that particular game.
(11:58):
Or, you know, if that's kind oflike the trend that you're
going to follow throughout theseason, you need to, you need to
have have Tank Bigsby as yournumber one guy.
You need to go ahead and makethat move right now, because one
thing we're finding out is thatTravis Etienne, when it comes
to the run game, especially withhow leaky this offensive line
is in the run game, he is justnot going to have success with
(12:21):
how things are set up now interms of the run game and the
offensive line and theirabilities in the run game, of
lack of ability in the run game.
So, that being said, you knowyou need somebody who, if
they're, you know, going to beleaky and people are going to be
in the backfield that can breakthose tackles which Tank Bigsby
(12:41):
has shown us on many, manyoccasions.
It's been plenty of times andplenty of instances where we've
seen Tank.
You know somebody, maybe get anarm on him or hit him in the
backfield.
He'll give you two to three tofour positive yards still
nonetheless, and that's kind ofhis game, if you will, and that
sets up the offense in asituation of, you know, second
(13:03):
and seven, second and six,whatever the case, may be much
more manageable second downsituations to move forward with.
But with ETN, if he getstackled in the backfield, that's
pretty much it, you know, andit kind of feels like at times
he's not as decisive as Bigsbytoo.
So, again, going back to what Iwas saying, if your plan is to
(13:25):
lean on the run game early ingames and throughout the rest of
the season, tank Bigsby needsto be your guy there.
That would help this offenseget out of the lows that they've
had or the struggles they'vehad out of the gate throughout
the entirety of this season.
Now, look, if you are going torely more on the passing game to
(13:47):
help yourself get out of these,you know, slow starts or what
have you?
You know, maybe you want tostart considering what we saw a
few weeks ago I think it mayhave been the Colts game or a
game around the Colts game wherewe saw, you know, earlier in
the season the Jets would startslow and then what got Trevor
Lawrence going and what got himto start playing a little bit
(14:09):
better throughout that littlestretch of three or four games
that we were discussing lastweek, was that.
You know, what started that, ifyou go back and look at the
season, was them getting ET inthe ball in the short passing
game.
Right, and I can remember Iforgot it was a game or two
three weeks ago where trevorlawrence went to travis et in
like four times, maybe even more, in the short passing game and
(14:33):
that helped open up things inthe passing game for the
intermediate level and then forthe you know um, for the deep
ball level which you would gothrough.
You know you obviously usebrian thomas jr for a lot of
that and sometimes christiankurt who's injured, but that
opened up things.
Just having that ability tocheck down to Travis Etienne
(14:53):
early in the game really gotTrevor going on the run that he
had, not just that particulargame but the run that he had.
So again, it's not rocketscience If your goal is to start
faster and you want to do itthrough the passing game, you're
going to have to rely on theshort passing game to do so.
And then that's where ETN wouldcome into play, if that is your
(15:18):
plan and thought and you knowmindset in terms of how to just
simply get going a little bitfaster than the Jacksonville
Jaguars have.
And then, as I said you know,get Evan DeBall more and most
definitely get Brian Thomas JrDeBall more, who looks like he's
pretty much open on every routethat he runs.
(15:38):
And the crazy part about it ishe's not even developed as a
route runner yet.
But even without that technicalroute running aspect part to
his game to his repertoire,which will come in the future,
part to his game to hisrepertoire, which will come in
the future he still looks likehe's running wide open pretty
much anytime you line him up outthere and have him run routes.
(16:01):
And another talking point thathurt the Jaguars in this game
early in the game in terms ofgetting going offensively.
And before I mention this, I dowant to read off a statistic
here from Daniel Griffiths,friend of the show here, who
does a lot of Jaguars statistics, and you know he posts them on
Twitter and what have you?
(16:21):
Just to kind of show you allthe struggles the Jaguars had
offensively in this game Tostart the game, in the first
half the Jacksonville jaguarsonly had one first down,
according to daniel by the wayyou can follow him at daniel d
griffiths um yards they had 31yards in comparison to
(16:41):
philadelphia who had 187.
And then, lastly, their time ofpossession was 8 minutes and 34
seconds in comparison, incomparison to philly who had a
ball for 21 minutes and 26seconds.
So if that doesn't tell thestory of how slow the Jaguars
offense started, then I don'tknow what will.
(17:02):
But one of the things that alsohurt this Jacksonville Jaguars
team, they did have aninterception which we certainly
can't blame on Trevor.
It is some things we can blameon Trevor, more on that later.
But the first interception, theone to Travis Etienne, was not
on him and I think TravisEtienne was running some kind of
like slant or post route and Iknow I literally was just saying
(17:24):
you know they need to rely onhim in a short passing game.
And here he goes.
He goes out there and has amiscue where the ball it might
have hit his chest plate orwhatever the case may be.
But it hit him in a place wherehe should have caught the ball.
He pops it up in the air andthen you know it's an
interception from one of theEagles linebackers and they got
(17:49):
people to thinking like, hey,man, like we might need to get
Travis up out of here.
But I think if you're gonna goto him another thing about that
too if you're gonna go to ETN inthe passing game, he's better
out in the flats, right, and youknow things of that nature, and
not running into the interiorof the defense that's a better
way to put it actually um, likehe was in this particular
(18:10):
instance, um, and you know, lo,and the one time that we do do
it you know we weren't makingrun a post we get the result
that we got right.
So I just wanted to bring thattalking point up, that Travis
Etienne just kind of going backto what I was saying when I was
mentioning him in the run gamehe's just really not helping his
(18:30):
team and that is somethingthat's just concerning, because
he was drafted in the firstround, right, I mean, granted,
it was during when Urban Meyerwas here, but he was drafted in
the first round.
We brought him in alongsideTrevor to be that guy for Trevor
, and this year has been onewhere he's just completely
falling off a cliff.
It's like him and Tank Bigsby.
(18:52):
In terms of where Tank was lastyear and where ETN is this year
, it's like they completelyswitched spots.
Last year we were talking aboutTank, who was a rookie at the
time, who was having fumblingissues and wasn't helping the
team at all and putting the teamat bad predicaments.
Now we're talking about ETNdoing it.
It's funny how much of adifference a year makes, but it
(19:14):
just hasn't been clicking forhim.
And you know I wouldn't beshocked if the next I tweeted
about this if the next GM comesin here and is maybe looking to
trade him.
You know like.
And one thing about it like GMslike to make a statement coming
into the building as well.
You know, maybe he might seeETn as an expendable trent balky
(19:36):
pick and hopefully we do get anew gm but he might see etn as
an expendable balky pick.
That would also send a messageof like hey, we're going in a
totally different direction andwe're going to get people in
here who can make the plays thattrevor lawrence needs to make.
So that'll be something towatch down the road.
But I guess we can't reallytalk about that now because
that's neither here or neitherthere.
That's more of a future topic.
(19:57):
And then one other thing thatstood out to me was the fourth
down that we didn't convert,which I think the Philadelphia
Eagles, if I can think about, uh, if I can recall um, and just
my mind serves me correctly, theEagles didn't take advantage of
it, even though they didreceive the ball on their side
of the field.
But the Jaguars had a fourthdown that they tried to convert
(20:18):
that did not go as planned.
Um, now, it wasn't picked offor anything like that.
It wasn't like a completedisaster, but I think it was a
play that Trevor Lawrence mighthave checked out of.
It looked like he made a callat the line of scrimmage and he
tried to get Evan Ingram outthere in the flats and Cooper
DeJean, if I'm not mistaken, wasall over it and it was a
(20:39):
turnover on downs.
And even before that the Jaguarstried to convert a third down,
a third and short through aquarterback sneak.
And the reason I'm mentioningthese two plays is because those
two plays kind of justhighlight the struggles and the
amount of issues the Jaguarshave had when it comes to
(21:01):
conversions and whatnot,particularly in the quarterback
sneak.
If y'all look at that play,what kind of upset me about that
is.
I believe the JacksonvilleJaguars could have done that
more successfully.
When you look at it, trevorLawrence would stop just short
and I think it was just a matterof like it's not being coached
right, like little things, likethe quarterback sneak isn't
(21:22):
being coached right.
But I think if Trevor Lawrencekeeps his feet going instead of
just taking a lunge forward,they get that third down
conversion.
But if you guys go back andlook at it, he kind of just
lunged ahead and as a result, hewas short.
Um, he didn't bring his feetwith him, and that's one of the
basic fundamentals of football,especially with the quarterback
sneak.
(21:42):
Of course.
Now as the quarterback, you'retrying to protect yourself and
what have you.
But just knowing where the lineof scrimmage is and knowing, um
, you know the amount of footdrive and estimating the amount
of foot drive that it would taketo get you the first down is
that's basic football that needsto be coached to these young
men that it seems like they'renot getting from Press Taylor
(22:02):
and Doug Peterson, who shouldknow better.
These two men were on a SuperBowl staff, right.
And yeah, here you have TrevorLawrence not bringing his feet
with him in the quarterbacksneak, and then, uh, potentially
we'll have to.
You know, I guess later downthe road we might know what the
deal was there when he checkedout of whatever they were going
(22:23):
to do on fourth down and if thatwas the case at all, and went
to Evan Ingram in the flats,unsuccessfully.
You know my mindset there waslike why not do the quarterback
sneak again?
You have a guy even thoughCooper Hodges did get injured in
the game but you have a guy,mitch Morris, who has actually
been better than I was givinghim credit for.
So you know, shout outs toMitch Morris, and again, we'll
(22:45):
call ourselves out anytime we'rewrong, but Mitch Morris has
been better than we've beengiving him credit for.
And then you look at a guy likeCooper Hodges, who is probably,
in my opinion, the mostnaturally strong or most
naturally gifted player on theoffensive line in terms of
strength.
You have those two guys rightthere on the offensive line in
(23:08):
front of you, and it didn't looklike the Eagles necessarily had
linebackers stacked near theline of scrimmage either too,
and at least not in front ofhodges and where mitch morse was
looks like that would have beenan easy conversion.
If you go for the quarterbacksneak again and you just go
behind those guys, just kind ofknowing where the strength is of
(23:28):
your, your offensive line andknowing what a weakness is of
that defensive line at that timeit's just basic stuff that you
go back and look at film andjust scratch your head and it's
like what is press taylorteaching these guys?
But nonetheless they continueto struggle and you know we at
this point we're just ready forthe season to be over.
So after the first half I'lltalk about the second half a
(23:50):
little bit offensively.
That's when the Jaguar startedgetting going.
We'll talk about the defense alittle bit.
But Trayvon Walker made a hugeplay there where you know I have
to go back and look at it.
But maybe just by ruling SaquonBarkley should have been ruled
down, but hey, you know the refsgave it to us if that was the
case and you know there's no onedoing it now.
(24:11):
But Trayvon Walker made a hugeplay of scoop and score.
More on him later.
Trevor Lawrence got going alittle bit.
The offense got going a littlebit.
Trevor Lawrence got his tworushing touchdowns during that
second half and then we made agame out of it and then we got
to the end of the game.
(24:34):
We were driving the lastoffensive drive of the game for
the Jacksonville Jaguars andTrevor makes the crucial mistake
that he did, which could be alittle injury related I don't, I
don't know yet, but you knowit's kind of hard to say on that
but he makes a crucial mistakenonetheless in a play where I
think somebody put a screenshotout of this where it might have
been four verts and DearnessJohnson, of all the running
(24:57):
backs right, it's the one on thefield at this particular moment
, this crucial moment, late inthe game, only one to two
minutes left in the game, Ithink less than two minutes left
in the game.
He's the one out there insteadof of maybe even Tank or Travis.
I know Travis had the fumbleearlier, but I mean I guess you
would rely on them more so inthe passing game than Dearness,
(25:20):
right, I mean that would makemore sense.
But Dearness goes out there, heruns an option route and, um,
it was admittedly kind of a goodplay on the Kobe Dean go dogs.
I hate that he made that playagainst us but, um, the Kobe
Dean does a good job of gettinghis eyes off of the running back
who was his responsibilityDearness Johnson and getting his
(25:41):
eyes on Trevor Lawrence.
He saw the misfire, was able toget the pick in the end zone
and you know that was the playthat a lot of people were
talking about, because thatthat's pretty much what ended
the game and a lot of peoplemade a good point.
It was a bad throw by Trevor,but even more so like what kind
of call was that at that moment?
Going back to Press Taylor right, and I am a guy that was
(26:03):
defending Press Taylor earlierin the year and last year
because he actually was not thetop issue for the Jacksonville
Jaguars.
He might might've been secondor third on the list, but now
he's becoming the top issue forthe Jacksonville Jaguars.
And you got to think like, whycall it that play?
Especially and also to the justthe amount of thought or lack
(26:26):
of thought that they put intothe situation in terms of time
management.
I think the Jaguars had, youknow, about one minute and 20
seconds or one minute and 40seconds left at that time and
here they are.
They're going to the end zonewith a dangerous play and not
trying to run the ball and leavevery little clock on the on the
board for the Eagles offense totake advantage of.
(26:48):
Because this is the thing.
If you are an NFL head coach,you know your team right.
So this is this doesn't onlyfall on press Taylor for the
wacky play call that it was, andyou know the lack of thought
into the time management aspectof it, but you also.
This also falls on DougPeterson from the perspective of
you know your team struggles inthe two-minute defense right,
(27:09):
we've seen it before.
You know what you have in thattwo defense.
Right, we've seen it before.
You know what you have in thattwo minute defense.
You know if you give the Eaglesthe ball back, that is a strong
chance that they're going toscore, and probably score a
touchdown or maybe a field goal,whatever the case may be.
So that's just, to me, that's alack of understanding of what
you have on defense, right, andthat part falls on Doug Peterson
(27:31):
.
So when looking at how thatplayed out, it's just all the
more reason we just want them toget up out of here, man Doug,
and Press Taylor and TrentBaalke as well, who that kind of
don't fall on him in terms ofthe play call and and things of
that nature and the timemanagement, but get him up out
of here too, for obvious reasons.
He's not a great GM.
We.
We've talked about that many,many times.
(27:53):
No need to get into that.
But, lastly, what I will do isgo ahead and flip the switch and
go to the defensive side andthen, leading the way for the
defensive side, it was FoyeAlouikin Well, actually, three
linebackers in terms of totaltackles.
They all they're their mostnotable linebackers at that.
In terms of total tackles, theyall their most notable
(28:14):
linebackers at that allregistered eight total tackles
between Foye, devin Lloyd andVentrell Miller.
Trayvon Walker was not farbehind.
He had seven total tackles andhe had the scoop and score as
well.
He also had a tackle for loss.
Josh Hines Allen had himself aday, two sacks on the the night.
(28:36):
They simply couldn't figure outwhat to do with him.
Um, but yeah, just when.
Looking at the defensive side ofthings, the story there to me
was just saquon barkley not onlyjust making a highlight reel of
them, um, as a matter of fact,like they had two moments on
there actually where not justSaquon, but I think it was
Smitty who, devontae Smith, whocaught one on Ronald Darby as
(29:00):
well, where you have to look atthem two plays and just feel
like, oh man, like that'sdefinitely going to be on ESPN
top 10 highlight, so we'll be onthere for the wrong reasons
tonight.
But yeah, the moral of thestory with the defense man, man
Saquon just did what he wantedwith this team and you know that
highlight play where he did thebackwards hurdle.
If that wasn't enough, justlook at the run game and the
(29:22):
ability or the, the statisticshe put up in the run game, right
, 27 carries for a let's see, itwas 159 yards and a touchdown.
And that one touchdown was justinsane.
Like I've freeze-framed thetouchdown.
I think it came late in thesecond quarter, if I'm not
mistaken, and, um, it looks likeyou know the jabs were probably
(29:44):
expecting pads, a lot of peopleplaying off the ball, a lot of
people like, I guess, kind ofbackpedaling andaling, and I
freeze framed it when Saquon washanded the ball by Jalen Hurts
and everybody was seven yards upthe field on defense, which
just breaking that down in termsof football 101.
We all know that doesn't.
That's not good for the defense.
(30:05):
If everybody's seven yards downthe field, the moment that the
running back touches the ball isprobably going to result in a
huge gain.
And you know, nobody was ableto come up and make the play.
The gap he had to run throughrightfully so, with everybody
playing so far off the ball wasmassive.
You could have drove asemi-truck through that.
And that was just kind ofindicative of just like the WTF
(30:30):
moment for Ryan Nielsen'sdefense which we all become so
accustomed to seeing over thelast few weeks.
Man.
And then I mean, you know, whenJalen Hurts went to the air, I
mean he didn't go like crazy,crazy through the air, he only
had 230 in terms of passingyardage, but he was efficient,
right, 18 of 24, didn't get alot of resistance there, you
(30:53):
know.
So he did complete under 20,you know completions, but at the
same time they were 18 veryeffective completions.
As I said, um davante smith ledthe way he had the touchdown I
mentioned.
On ronald darby, who has justbeen.
I think another kind of moral ofthis story and what happened
defensively is that thedefensive players the Jaguars
(31:16):
picked up in free agency.
Now this is where it does fallon Trent Baalke and why he needs
to be up out of here as well.
But the defensive plays thatwere made, or the lack of
defensive plays that were madein this game kind of all fall,
and this kind of has been themoral of the story for the Jazz
all year.
They all kind of fall on thesefree agent pickups that Trent
Baalke picked up who have beenvery ineffective for this team,
(31:39):
most notably Ronald Darby,darnell Savage.
They haven't made the impactthat we were hoping, or you know
that Baalke was hoping theywould make.
But yeah, smith had fourreceptions for 87 yards, with
the big catch on Ronald Darby.
Saquon Barkley again showed upin the passing game as well.
Not only did he kill us in therun game, he killed us in the
(32:01):
passing game and that highlightplay where he back hurdled
Jarrion was kind of telling ofthat had a receiving touchdown
as well.
They couldn't do anything withhim either.
So it really was the SaquonBarkley and Devontae Smith show,
because I think AJ Brown leftthe game early, right, and you
know when you're in thatsituation where one of the star
(32:23):
receivers is out of the game,you know, as the Jacksonville
Jaguars, you have to takeadvantage of that, right, and
you got to capitalize on thatand you got to get the w, but,
as we all know, especially witha ryan nielsen-led defense, they
weren't able to do it.
They gave up way too many bigplays between these two players
I mentioned smith and barkleyand the result was the result,
(32:45):
which was 23 to 28 for the gamein which the jacksonville
jaguars, you know, again, theyhad a chance in the end but fell
just short.
Um, and in a nutshell, theyfell just short because of that
slow start I mentioned and justthe inability to make the plays
in the passing game and the rungame that needed to be made.
(33:06):
So I think, that being said,this is a good place to stop the
podcast Again.
I said this one was going to bebrief and I actually held to
that Before we go ahead and turnit in for tonight.
As I mentioned earlier, you canfollow me at Sportsground
underscore dumb my co-host, philBarrera at Phil the Filipino.
(33:26):
On Twitter.
You can follow the TouchdownJaguars Twitter handle at TD
Jaguars pod.
Our official website isTouchdown Jaguars dot com, where
you can find archived episodesand written content.
As always.
Also shout outs to our sponsor,seatgeek.
Who is your go to provider foryour ticketing needs, whether
(33:47):
it's in the sports world,whether it's in the music world
or whatever event it is thatyou're looking for tickets to?
Go ahead, check out SeatGeek.
They have an app, they have awebsite, seatgeekcom, and you
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Again, that's Touchdown Jaguarsto save yourself twenty dollars
(34:10):
.
So, all of that said, we willgo ahead and shut it down.
We got the Vikings coming upand you know, of course, for
that game, we'll be here torecord for it win, lose, tie,
draw, whatever the case may be,we'll be here to discuss it and
if it ends in a loss, like allof a lot of the games have this
(34:30):
season, I will be here to helpyou all vent your frustrations.
So, in the meantime, take careof each other, look out for one
another and you all hold it down, as I am James Johnson and I am
signing out.
The Touchdown Jacksonville 109 yards
Incredible, incredible.
Play action Upstairs wide open.
Tommy Bohannon, touchdownJacksonville Looking for Jimmy
(00:54):
in the end zone.
Touchdown Jaguars.
Touchdown Jaguars.
Touchdown Jaguars.
Welcome to the TouchdownJaguars podcast.
Here are your hosts, jamesJohnson and Phil Smith.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Touchdown
(01:16):
Jaguars podcast for episode 101.
I am your host for today.
Ryan is solo here for thisepisode.
Uh, james Johnson, as you allknow, I'm normally joined by my
cohost, phil Smith, or, excuseme, phil Barrera.
Sorry for butchering that.
Um, we all know he had tochange in last name but my
(01:39):
cohost, phil Barrera, um, foreach episode, but this week uh
actually had to.
He took a little bit of avacation this weekend and made a
trip to Dallas.
So, with all of the travelingand whatnot going on, I just
told him I'll hold it down forthis episode and I mean, you
know, when you're dealing withthe Jacksonville Jaguars, you
(02:00):
need a break, right?
So that break was certainlywell deserved and and um, I, I
totally, you know, get a little,taking a little time out to uh,
take care of yourself and allof that good stuff.
And, quite frankly, he probablysaved himself some heartache,
some anxiety.
You know, um, he also didn'twaste his time because obviously
(02:24):
, uh, the of the JacksonvilleJaguars last game, which they
fell to the Philadelphia Eagles28 to 23, wasn't what we wanted,
of course.
Now you know we'll get into theactual meat and potatoes and
the nuts and bolts of the gameitself and how it went down.
(02:47):
And you know the Jaguars didshow some fight and all that
good stuff.
But at the end of the day an Lis an L and there are no moral
victories in the NFL.
But going back to Phil, yeah,he definitely saved himself.
You know, some time that hecouldn't get back by missing the
game and we will discuss all ofthat in today's episode.
(03:08):
So the hope is to keep this onebrief, because I don't want to
really edit it, have a lot toedit and what have you.
So the hope is to keep this onebrief.
We'll get right into it here.
As always, before we talk aboutthe actual game and review the
game itself, we take the timeout in the beginning of the show
to plug our handles for our newlisteners and if you are a new
(03:32):
listener, welcome to thetouchdown jaguars platform.
Um, we hope that you stickaround for many, many more
episodes.
And then to um, those who havebeen listening for years, even
before we were, to touchdownjaguars podcast.
We appreciate you as well.
Of course, like I was about tosay, we plug our handles in the
(03:53):
beginning of each episode.
You can follow me atsportsgrind underscore done on
twitter.
You can follow phil at phil thefil Filipino on Twitter.
Our podcast handle istdjaguarspod and our official
website is touchdownjaguarscom,where you can go to find
archived episodes and writtencontent.
(04:16):
Of course, we are on all ofyour major podcasting platforms
Apple Music, apple Podcasts,spotify, google Play, you name
it and if we aren't there, feelfree to let us know and we'll,
you know, do our best to get ontheir platform so we can keep
you informed on the JacksonvilleJaguars from a week to week
(04:39):
basis and keep you in the loopwith your favorite team.
And also, I want to give a shoutout to our longtime sponsor in
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comes to any major event.
Of course, we cover sports,most specifically the NFL,
(05:01):
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Feel free to check them out.
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They have you covered there atSeatGeek.
And also we have you covered asa first-time user.
(05:25):
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We have a promotion code andthat's touchdown jaguars in
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You know, flip that, spin ittowards gas, whatever the case
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They got you covered there aswell.
Feel free to check them out.
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Regardless, our promotion codewill work either way and you
(06:10):
also not only save yourself somemoney, but, you know, help us
keep the lights on, so to speak,here at the Touchdown Jaguars
podcast and, as promised, wewill go ahead and get right into
the show.
As the jacksville jaguars fellto the philadelphia eagles this
sunday, I would in what wassupposed to be a primetime game
(06:32):
initially, but it gotrescheduled to a four o'clock
game, and I mean it was.
I will say this it wasentertaining.
Um, it would have been a goodsunday night football game, as
opposed to what we got.
I think that was the Colts andthe other team is blanking out
on me.
It was the Colts and somebodyelse.
Let me check on the littleschedule here.
(06:52):
Bear with me y'all and theVikings, that's who.
It was the Vikings.
That game went down by a scoreof 21-13 in favor of the Vikings
.
But we're not here to talk aboutthem.
Instead, we're here to talkabout the jacksonville jaguars.
And before we get into the gameitself, which has a lot of
talking points, we'll get intothat.
(07:14):
But, um, of course we'll gothrough the box score here, as
we always do.
Uh, trevor lawrence was 16 of31 for 169 yards.
He did have two picks We'lldiscuss both of those, because
those are two key talking pointsas well and he had two Russian
touchdowns.
So, you know, while he had somepicks, he also, you know, was
(07:38):
the reason the Jaguars were ableto get some points on the board
offensively.
And then, in terms of therussian statistics you know it
wasn't all that pretty and greatin terms of the russian
statistics uh, travis etn,returning from his hamstring
injury, had uh, three carriesfor 24 yards, while you know,
the average was, uh, eight yardsper carry.
(08:00):
He didn't necessarily help theteam on the scoring side of
things.
St Bigsby had eight carries for22 yards good for 2.8 yard per
carry rate.
And then also Trevor Lawrencehe had five carries, only had
eight yards, but again, the keywith him is he had two rushing
(08:20):
touchdowns along the way.
Then, receiving wise, it wasEvan Ingram leading the way.
Again, you know, and this isgoing to be one of the talking
points the offense didn't reallyhave a lot of juice, especially
in the beginning of the game.
But Evan Ingram, with fivecarries, or, excuse me, five
receptions for 45 yards, wasn'tsuper effective in terms of his
(08:42):
impact.
Parker Washington threereceptions for 41 yards.
Of course he saw a lot of timeon the field as an offensive
player because of the injuriesthat we previously endured,
which he handles a lot of kickreturn and punt return duties,
but this week he had to step inand help as much as he could On
(09:03):
the offensive side.
Austin Trammell, also called upfrom well, I won't say also,
but called up from the practicesquad and also had to help this
receiving group that is bangedup at the moment.
As we all know, christian Kirkis out for the season due to a
shoulder injury that hesustained, but Austin Trammell,
with two catches for 40 yardsand, uh, brian Thomas only had
(09:28):
two catches for 22 yards, which,again, that is another talking
point for this episode.
So, before we get into thedefensive side of the ball,
let's go ahead and discuss.
You know what happenedoffensively and I think you know
I just wrote in my notes hereum, I've seen the game, of
course, I saw it live and then,um, I saw like half of it again
(09:51):
in a re-watch and, um, you know,one of the notes that you know
I came away with here issomething that I just mentioned,
and it was just, you know,another slow start that we've
seen, you know, plague theJaguars, um, all this season and
you, you know, even before, butanother slow start for them
offensively and I believe we canattribute that to you know,
(10:12):
it's not rocket science, eventhough the offensive coordinator
and, you know, the Jaguarscoaching staff kind of try and
make it that way, but I feellike it's probably not rocket
science of why they arestruggling early and it's just a
matter of you know they got toget to their stars early in the
game and they got to highlighttheir stars early in the game.
(10:33):
I mean, you know, I just readoff Brian Thomas Jr's highlights
, or, excuse me, his statisticsand he only had two catches on
the whole night.
So, um, that in itself speaksfor itself.
But they, you know, they got toget to him and your go-to guys
that you've um been able togenerate offense through your
(10:53):
brian thomas juniors of theworld, uh, your tank bigs bees
of the world.
You know, and I know there'sbeen controversy where doug came
out to say like, hey, traTravis Etienne is our starter,
although Tank Biggs leads theleague, or was leading the
league at one point in yards percarry.
He had to come out and clearthat up and say, hey, travis is
(11:14):
still the starter and Evan Egramis the other one you have to
get to as well.
I mean, this is a guy that hadrecord numbers as a tight end
last year.
But I think that's really thekey for the Jacksonville Jaguars
getting themselves out of theseslow starts, and you would
think they would have picked upon that by now, but obviously
they haven't.
Kind of going back to the TankBigsby thing and the Travis
(11:37):
Etienne thing is one thing Ithink that could help them in
terms of getting this offensegoing.
If you're going to start thegame off running the ball a lot,
or you're going to start thisgame off or any game off for
that matter leaning on the rungame, you definitely need to
have Tate Bigsby as your starterfor that particular game.
(11:58):
Or, you know, if that's kind oflike the trend that you're
going to follow throughout theseason, you need to, you need to
have have Tank Bigsby as yournumber one guy.
You need to go ahead and makethat move right now, because one
thing we're finding out is thatTravis Etienne, when it comes
to the run game, especially withhow leaky this offensive line
is in the run game, he is justnot going to have success with
(12:21):
how things are set up now interms of the run game and the
offensive line and theirabilities in the run game, of
lack of ability in the run game.
So, that being said, you knowyou need somebody who, if
they're, you know, going to beleaky and people are going to be
in the backfield that can breakthose tackles which Tank Bigsby
(12:41):
has shown us on many, manyoccasions.
It's been plenty of times andplenty of instances where we've
seen Tank.
You know somebody, maybe get anarm on him or hit him in the
backfield.
He'll give you two to three tofour positive yards still
nonetheless, and that's kind ofhis game, if you will, and that
sets up the offense in asituation of, you know, second
(13:03):
and seven, second and six,whatever the case, may be much
more manageable second downsituations to move forward with.
But with ETN, if he getstackled in the backfield, that's
pretty much it, you know, andit kind of feels like at times
he's not as decisive as Bigsbytoo.
So, again, going back to what Iwas saying, if your plan is to
(13:25):
lean on the run game early ingames and throughout the rest of
the season, tank Bigsby needsto be your guy there.
That would help this offenseget out of the lows that they've
had or the struggles they'vehad out of the gate throughout
the entirety of this season.
Now, look, if you are going torely more on the passing game to
(13:47):
help yourself get out of these,you know, slow starts or what
have you?
You know, maybe you want tostart considering what we saw a
few weeks ago I think it mayhave been the Colts game or a
game around the Colts game wherewe saw, you know, earlier in
the season the Jets would startslow and then what got Trevor
Lawrence going and what got himto start playing a little bit
(14:09):
better throughout that littlestretch of three or four games
that we were discussing lastweek, was that.
You know, what started that, ifyou go back and look at the
season, was them getting ET inthe ball in the short passing
game.
Right, and I can remember Iforgot it was a game or two
three weeks ago where trevorlawrence went to travis et in
like four times, maybe even more, in the short passing game and
(14:33):
that helped open up things inthe passing game for the
intermediate level and then forthe you know um, for the deep
ball level which you would gothrough.
You know you obviously usebrian thomas jr for a lot of
that and sometimes christiankurt who's injured, but that
opened up things.
Just having that ability tocheck down to Travis Etienne
(14:53):
early in the game really gotTrevor going on the run that he
had, not just that particulargame but the run that he had.
So again, it's not rocketscience If your goal is to start
faster and you want to do itthrough the passing game, you're
going to have to rely on theshort passing game to do so.
And then that's where ETN wouldcome into play, if that is your
(15:18):
plan and thought and you knowmindset in terms of how to just
simply get going a little bitfaster than the Jacksonville
Jaguars have.
And then, as I said you know,get Evan DeBall more and most
definitely get Brian Thomas JrDeBall more, who looks like he's
pretty much open on every routethat he runs.
(15:38):
And the crazy part about it ishe's not even developed as a
route runner yet.
But even without that technicalroute running aspect part to
his game to his repertoire,which will come in the future,
part to his game to hisrepertoire, which will come in
the future he still looks likehe's running wide open pretty
much anytime you line him up outthere and have him run routes.
(16:01):
And another talking point thathurt the Jaguars in this game
early in the game in terms ofgetting going offensively.
And before I mention this, I dowant to read off a statistic
here from Daniel Griffiths,friend of the show here, who
does a lot of Jaguars statistics, and you know he posts them on
Twitter and what have you?
(16:21):
Just to kind of show you allthe struggles the Jaguars had
offensively in this game Tostart the game, in the first
half the Jacksonville jaguarsonly had one first down,
according to daniel by the wayyou can follow him at daniel d
griffiths um yards they had 31yards in comparison to
(16:41):
philadelphia who had 187.
And then, lastly, their time ofpossession was 8 minutes and 34
seconds in comparison, incomparison to philly who had a
ball for 21 minutes and 26seconds.
So if that doesn't tell thestory of how slow the Jaguars
offense started, then I don'tknow what will.
(17:02):
But one of the things that alsohurt this Jacksonville Jaguars
team, they did have aninterception which we certainly
can't blame on Trevor.
It is some things we can blameon Trevor, more on that later.
But the first interception, theone to Travis Etienne, was not
on him and I think TravisEtienne was running some kind of
like slant or post route and Iknow I literally was just saying
(17:24):
you know they need to rely onhim in a short passing game.
And here he goes.
He goes out there and has amiscue where the ball it might
have hit his chest plate orwhatever the case may be.
But it hit him in a place wherehe should have caught the ball.
He pops it up in the air andthen you know it's an
interception from one of theEagles linebackers and they got
(17:49):
people to thinking like, hey,man, like we might need to get
Travis up out of here.
But I think if you're gonna goto him another thing about that
too if you're gonna go to ETN inthe passing game, he's better
out in the flats, right, and youknow things of that nature, and
not running into the interiorof the defense that's a better
way to put it actually um, likehe was in this particular
(18:10):
instance, um, and you know, lo,and the one time that we do do
it you know we weren't makingrun a post we get the result
that we got right.
So I just wanted to bring thattalking point up, that Travis
Etienne just kind of going backto what I was saying when I was
mentioning him in the run gamehe's just really not helping his
(18:30):
team and that is somethingthat's just concerning, because
he was drafted in the firstround, right, I mean, granted,
it was during when Urban Meyerwas here, but he was drafted in
the first round.
We brought him in alongsideTrevor to be that guy for Trevor
, and this year has been onewhere he's just completely
falling off a cliff.
It's like him and Tank Bigsby.
(18:52):
In terms of where Tank was lastyear and where ETN is this year
, it's like they completelyswitched spots.
Last year we were talking aboutTank, who was a rookie at the
time, who was having fumblingissues and wasn't helping the
team at all and putting the teamat bad predicaments.
Now we're talking about ETNdoing it.
It's funny how much of adifference a year makes, but it
(19:14):
just hasn't been clicking forhim.
And you know I wouldn't beshocked if the next I tweeted
about this if the next GM comesin here and is maybe looking to
trade him.
You know like.
And one thing about it like GMslike to make a statement coming
into the building as well.
You know, maybe he might seeETn as an expendable trent balky
(19:36):
pick and hopefully we do get anew gm but he might see etn as
an expendable balky pick.
That would also send a messageof like hey, we're going in a
totally different direction andwe're going to get people in
here who can make the plays thattrevor lawrence needs to make.
So that'll be something towatch down the road.
But I guess we can't reallytalk about that now because
that's neither here or neitherthere.
That's more of a future topic.
(19:57):
And then one other thing thatstood out to me was the fourth
down that we didn't convert,which I think the Philadelphia
Eagles, if I can think about, uh, if I can recall um, and just
my mind serves me correctly, theEagles didn't take advantage of
it, even though they didreceive the ball on their side
of the field.
But the Jaguars had a fourthdown that they tried to convert
(20:18):
that did not go as planned.
Um, now, it wasn't picked offor anything like that.
It wasn't like a completedisaster, but I think it was a
play that Trevor Lawrence mighthave checked out of.
It looked like he made a callat the line of scrimmage and he
tried to get Evan Ingram outthere in the flats and Cooper
DeJean, if I'm not mistaken, wasall over it and it was a
(20:39):
turnover on downs.
And even before that the Jaguarstried to convert a third down,
a third and short through aquarterback sneak.
And the reason I'm mentioningthese two plays is because those
two plays kind of justhighlight the struggles and the
amount of issues the Jaguarshave had when it comes to
(21:01):
conversions and whatnot,particularly in the quarterback
sneak.
If y'all look at that play,what kind of upset me about that
is.
I believe the JacksonvilleJaguars could have done that
more successfully.
When you look at it, trevorLawrence would stop just short
and I think it was just a matterof like it's not being coached
right, like little things, likethe quarterback sneak isn't
(21:22):
being coached right.
But I think if Trevor Lawrencekeeps his feet going instead of
just taking a lunge forward,they get that third down
conversion.
But if you guys go back andlook at it, he kind of just
lunged ahead and as a result, hewas short.
Um, he didn't bring his feetwith him, and that's one of the
basic fundamentals of football,especially with the quarterback
sneak.
(21:42):
Of course.
Now as the quarterback, you'retrying to protect yourself and
what have you.
But just knowing where the lineof scrimmage is and knowing, um
, you know the amount of footdrive and estimating the amount
of foot drive that it would taketo get you the first down is
that's basic football that needsto be coached to these young
men that it seems like they'renot getting from Press Taylor
(22:02):
and Doug Peterson, who shouldknow better.
These two men were on a SuperBowl staff, right.
And yeah, here you have TrevorLawrence not bringing his feet
with him in the quarterbacksneak, and then, uh, potentially
we'll have to.
You know, I guess later downthe road we might know what the
deal was there when he checkedout of whatever they were going
(22:23):
to do on fourth down and if thatwas the case at all, and went
to Evan Ingram in the flats,unsuccessfully.
You know my mindset there waslike why not do the quarterback
sneak again?
You have a guy even thoughCooper Hodges did get injured in
the game but you have a guy,mitch Morris, who has actually
been better than I was givinghim credit for.
So you know, shout outs toMitch Morris, and again, we'll
(22:45):
call ourselves out anytime we'rewrong, but Mitch Morris has
been better than we've beengiving him credit for.
And then you look at a guy likeCooper Hodges, who is probably,
in my opinion, the mostnaturally strong or most
naturally gifted player on theoffensive line in terms of
strength.
You have those two guys rightthere on the offensive line in
(23:08):
front of you, and it didn't looklike the Eagles necessarily had
linebackers stacked near theline of scrimmage either too,
and at least not in front ofhodges and where mitch morse was
looks like that would have beenan easy conversion.
If you go for the quarterbacksneak again and you just go
behind those guys, just kind ofknowing where the strength is of
(23:28):
your, your offensive line andknowing what a weakness is of
that defensive line at that timeit's just basic stuff that you
go back and look at film andjust scratch your head and it's
like what is press taylorteaching these guys?
But nonetheless they continueto struggle and you know we at
this point we're just ready forthe season to be over.
So after the first half I'lltalk about the second half a
(23:50):
little bit offensively.
That's when the Jaguar startedgetting going.
We'll talk about the defense alittle bit.
But Trayvon Walker made a hugeplay there where you know I have
to go back and look at it.
But maybe just by ruling SaquonBarkley should have been ruled
down, but hey, you know the refsgave it to us if that was the
case and you know there's no onedoing it now.
(24:11):
But Trayvon Walker made a hugeplay of scoop and score.
More on him later.
Trevor Lawrence got going alittle bit.
The offense got going a littlebit.
Trevor Lawrence got his tworushing touchdowns during that
second half and then we made agame out of it and then we got
to the end of the game.
(24:34):
We were driving the lastoffensive drive of the game for
the Jacksonville Jaguars andTrevor makes the crucial mistake
that he did, which could be alittle injury related I don't, I
don't know yet, but you knowit's kind of hard to say on that
but he makes a crucial mistakenonetheless in a play where I
think somebody put a screenshotout of this where it might have
been four verts and DearnessJohnson, of all the running
(24:57):
backs right, it's the one on thefield at this particular moment
, this crucial moment, late inthe game, only one to two
minutes left in the game, Ithink less than two minutes left
in the game.
He's the one out there insteadof of maybe even Tank or Travis.
I know Travis had the fumbleearlier, but I mean I guess you
would rely on them more so inthe passing game than Dearness,
(25:20):
right, I mean that would makemore sense.
But Dearness goes out there, heruns an option route and, um,
it was admittedly kind of a goodplay on the Kobe Dean go dogs.
I hate that he made that playagainst us but, um, the Kobe
Dean does a good job of gettinghis eyes off of the running back
who was his responsibilityDearness Johnson and getting his
(25:41):
eyes on Trevor Lawrence.
He saw the misfire, was able toget the pick in the end zone
and you know that was the playthat a lot of people were
talking about, because thatthat's pretty much what ended
the game and a lot of peoplemade a good point.
It was a bad throw by Trevor,but even more so like what kind
of call was that at that moment?
Going back to Press Taylor right, and I am a guy that was
(26:03):
defending Press Taylor earlierin the year and last year
because he actually was not thetop issue for the Jacksonville
Jaguars.
He might might've been secondor third on the list, but now
he's becoming the top issue forthe Jacksonville Jaguars.
And you got to think like, whycall it that play?
Especially and also to the justthe amount of thought or lack
(26:26):
of thought that they put intothe situation in terms of time
management.
I think the Jaguars had, youknow, about one minute and 20
seconds or one minute and 40seconds left at that time and
here they are.
They're going to the end zonewith a dangerous play and not
trying to run the ball and leavevery little clock on the on the
board for the Eagles offense totake advantage of.
(26:48):
Because this is the thing.
If you are an NFL head coach,you know your team right.
So this is this doesn't onlyfall on press Taylor for the
wacky play call that it was, andyou know the lack of thought
into the time management aspectof it, but you also.
This also falls on DougPeterson from the perspective of
you know your team struggles inthe two-minute defense right,
(27:09):
we've seen it before.
You know what you have in thattwo defense.
Right, we've seen it before.
You know what you have in thattwo minute defense.
You know if you give the Eaglesthe ball back, that is a strong
chance that they're going toscore, and probably score a
touchdown or maybe a field goal,whatever the case may be.
So that's just, to me, that's alack of understanding of what
you have on defense, right, andthat part falls on Doug Peterson
(27:31):
.
So when looking at how thatplayed out, it's just all the
more reason we just want them toget up out of here, man Doug,
and Press Taylor and TrentBaalke as well, who that kind of
don't fall on him in terms ofthe play call and and things of
that nature and the timemanagement, but get him up out
of here too, for obvious reasons.
He's not a great GM.
We.
We've talked about that many,many times.
(27:53):
No need to get into that.
But, lastly, what I will do isgo ahead and flip the switch and
go to the defensive side andthen, leading the way for the
defensive side, it was FoyeAlouikin Well, actually, three
linebackers in terms of totaltackles.
They all they're their mostnotable linebackers at that.
In terms of total tackles, theyall their most notable
(28:14):
linebackers at that allregistered eight total tackles
between Foye, devin Lloyd andVentrell Miller.
Trayvon Walker was not farbehind.
He had seven total tackles andhe had the scoop and score as
well.
He also had a tackle for loss.
Josh Hines Allen had himself aday, two sacks on the the night.
(28:36):
They simply couldn't figure outwhat to do with him.
Um, but yeah, just when.
Looking at the defensive side ofthings, the story there to me
was just saquon barkley not onlyjust making a highlight reel of
them, um, as a matter of fact,like they had two moments on
there actually where not justSaquon, but I think it was
Smitty who, devontae Smith, whocaught one on Ronald Darby as
(29:00):
well, where you have to look atthem two plays and just feel
like, oh man, like that'sdefinitely going to be on ESPN
top 10 highlight, so we'll be onthere for the wrong reasons
tonight.
But yeah, the moral of thestory with the defense man, man
Saquon just did what he wantedwith this team and you know that
highlight play where he did thebackwards hurdle.
If that wasn't enough, justlook at the run game and the
(29:22):
ability or the, the statisticshe put up in the run game, right
, 27 carries for a let's see, itwas 159 yards and a touchdown.
And that one touchdown was justinsane.
Like I've freeze-framed thetouchdown.
I think it came late in thesecond quarter, if I'm not
mistaken, and, um, it looks likeyou know the jabs were probably
(29:44):
expecting pads, a lot of peopleplaying off the ball, a lot of
people like, I guess, kind ofbackpedaling andaling, and I
freeze framed it when Saquon washanded the ball by Jalen Hurts
and everybody was seven yards upthe field on defense, which
just breaking that down in termsof football 101.
We all know that doesn't.
That's not good for the defense.
(30:05):
If everybody's seven yards downthe field, the moment that the
running back touches the ball isprobably going to result in a
huge gain.
And you know, nobody was ableto come up and make the play.
The gap he had to run throughrightfully so, with everybody
playing so far off the ball wasmassive.
You could have drove asemi-truck through that.
And that was just kind ofindicative of just like the WTF
(30:30):
moment for Ryan Nielsen'sdefense which we all become so
accustomed to seeing over thelast few weeks.
Man.
And then I mean, you know, whenJalen Hurts went to the air, I
mean he didn't go like crazy,crazy through the air, he only
had 230 in terms of passingyardage, but he was efficient,
right, 18 of 24, didn't get alot of resistance there, you
(30:53):
know.
So he did complete under 20,you know completions, but at the
same time they were 18 veryeffective completions.
As I said, um davante smith ledthe way he had the touchdown I
mentioned.
On ronald darby, who has justbeen.
I think another kind of moral ofthis story and what happened
defensively is that thedefensive players the Jaguars
(31:16):
picked up in free agency.
Now this is where it does fallon Trent Baalke and why he needs
to be up out of here as well.
But the defensive plays thatwere made, or the lack of
defensive plays that were madein this game kind of all fall,
and this kind of has been themoral of the story for the Jazz
all year.
They all kind of fall on thesefree agent pickups that Trent
Baalke picked up who have beenvery ineffective for this team,
(31:39):
most notably Ronald Darby,darnell Savage.
They haven't made the impactthat we were hoping, or you know
that Baalke was hoping theywould make.
But yeah, smith had fourreceptions for 87 yards, with
the big catch on Ronald Darby.
Saquon Barkley again showed upin the passing game as well.
Not only did he kill us in therun game, he killed us in the
(32:01):
passing game and that highlightplay where he back hurdled
Jarrion was kind of telling ofthat had a receiving touchdown
as well.
They couldn't do anything withhim either.
So it really was the SaquonBarkley and Devontae Smith show,
because I think AJ Brown leftthe game early, right, and you
know when you're in thatsituation where one of the star
(32:23):
receivers is out of the game,you know, as the Jacksonville
Jaguars, you have to takeadvantage of that, right, and
you got to capitalize on thatand you got to get the w, but,
as we all know, especially witha ryan nielsen-led defense, they
weren't able to do it.
They gave up way too many bigplays between these two players
I mentioned smith and barkleyand the result was the result,
(32:45):
which was 23 to 28 for the gamein which the jacksonville
jaguars, you know, again, theyhad a chance in the end but fell
just short.
Um, and in a nutshell, theyfell just short because of that
slow start I mentioned and justthe inability to make the plays
in the passing game and the rungame that needed to be made.
(33:06):
So I think, that being said,this is a good place to stop the
podcast Again.
I said this one was going to bebrief and I actually held to
that Before we go ahead and turnit in for tonight.
As I mentioned earlier, you canfollow me at Sportsground
underscore dumb my co-host, philBarrera at Phil the Filipino.
(33:26):
On Twitter.
You can follow the TouchdownJaguars Twitter handle at TD
Jaguars pod.
Our official website isTouchdown Jaguars dot com, where
you can find archived episodesand written content.
As always.
Also shout outs to our sponsor,seatgeek.
Who is your go to provider foryour ticketing needs, whether
(33:47):
it's in the sports world,whether it's in the music world
or whatever event it is thatyou're looking for tickets to?
Go ahead, check out SeatGeek.
They have an app, they have awebsite, seatgeekcom, and you
can use our promotion code,touchdown Jaguars, to save
yourself twenty dollars on yourfirst order with them.
Again, that's Touchdown Jaguarsto save yourself twenty dollars
(34:10):
.
So, all of that said, we willgo ahead and shut it down.
We got the Vikings coming upand you know, of course, for
that game, we'll be here torecord for it win, lose, tie,
draw, whatever the case may be,we'll be here to discuss it and
if it ends in a loss, like allof a lot of the games have this
(34:30):
season, I will be here to helpyou all vent your frustrations.
So, in the meantime, take careof each other, look out for one
another and you all hold it down, as I am James Johnson and I am
signing out.
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