The Jacksonville Jaguars won six games in the first eight weeks of the season, but only one of those victories was at EverBank Stadium.
“We haven’t played our best football at home, which is crazy,” Jaguars coach Doug Pederson said Wednesday. “Those two early games that we didn’t play very well, those are all things that we have to do better. We’re playing in front of our fans, we’re at home, our stadium, our locker room. We’ve got to feed off the energy, obviously, from the crowd and play our best football.
“If you want that home-field advantage, or try to play for home-field advantage, you’ve got to do it at home. That’s why they call it home-field advantage. We’ve just got to focus in on that.”
The “two early games” that Pederson referred to were back-to-back losses against the Kansas City Chiefs and Houston Texans in Weeks 2 and 3. Both of those games were at EverBank Stadium and still stand as the Jaguars’ only losses so far this season.
In Week 6, the Jaguars finally gave their home fans something to celebrate when they beat the Indianapolis Colts, 37-20.
With back-to-back home games coming up and five games at EverBank Stadium in the next eight weeks, the Jaguars’ performance in Jacksonville down the stretch will largely determine the way the rest of their season
As Jaguars safety Andrew Wingard astutely put it, “We need to win all our home games and we’re gonna go to the [expletive] Super Bowl.”
