Even the greatest players in any sport can just dog it in particular games. You never want to see that happen in the postseason, but Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence, who looked a lot like everybody expected him to in the 2022 regular season once he was freed from Urban Mayer’s unserious leadership and coached by Doug Pederson instead, absolutely started the first playoff game of his career in the worst possible way.
Lawrence and the Jaguars had four drives in the first quarter of their wild-card game against the Los Angeles Chargers. Those drives ended thusly: Interception, interception, punt on a three-and-out, and yet another interception. In that first quarter, Lawrence completed four passes to his own receivers, and three to the Chargers. He attempted 13 passes, and finished the first quarter with a quarterback rating of 0.6.
Here’s the real oddity — Lawrence had 222 passing attempts on first down in his NFL career before this game, and he had never thrown a first-down interception in two professional seasons. He had completed 153 of those 222 attempts for 1,549 yards, six touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 97.6 — which is also by far his highest passer rating by down.
The Chargers scored 17 points from Lawrence’s interceptions, and it’ll not be up to Lawrence to do something — anything — to reverse course before his team goes one-and-done in a stupefying manner.
