One month ago, the Jacksonville Jaguars were on a high after winning back-to-back games convincingly to start the season 2-1. But they would unknowingly begin a five-game losing streak, and every one of those loses would end within eight points or less.
Doug Pederson after last week’s loss to the Denver Broncos, “I truly believe that good things are going to happen for this football team. We’re sitting here after eight games, not where we want to be, obviously, but to every man in there, nobody is going to hang their head. Nobody is going to feel sorry for us. We’re not going to make excuses. We’ve just got to continue to work.”
When looking at the Jaguars statistically, they are slightly above average on both sides of the ball.
It’s really when we dive deeper into the metrics and tape that we can tell the entire story. Let’s get into it and diagnose what is going wrong with this Jaguars team.
Red zone efficiency
When looking at Lawrence’s overall production per dropback, he’s in good company. So how can the sixth most productive quarterback in the league have five straight losses by only one score? The main issue comes to light when we look at Lawrence’s EPA in the red zone. There lies the biggest problem.
According to Sports Info Solutions, Lawrence has an EPA of -15.33 in the red zone, putting the Jaguars offense 24th in red zone scoring percentage (50%).
Lawrence currently leads the league in red zone interceptions, with three out of his six total.
The Jaguars are sixth in the league when it comes to series ending in a touchdown or field goal, but the turnover rating is one of the highest in the league at 9%.
Let’s dive even further into the red zone numbers. Lawrence’s EPA is 31st in the league when throwing outside the numbers (-8.60), he’s ranked 20th inside the numbers (-4.33), and he is fourth when attacking the middle (+1.17).
Early in the season, the Jaguars were opening the middle of the field with more success compared to these last few weeks.
Let’s go back to early in the season. Week two against the Indianapolis Colts, the shallow crosser to tight end Evan Engram takes away the hook/zone defender opening up the middle for Christian Kirk.
Lately, the offense hasn’t been able to move defenders who are sitting in the middle of the field; teams have adjusted by calling more zone coverages.
Now, defenses are dropping their safeties and bracketing any receiver over the middle. In the clip below, Engram is running out to the flat, which brought the defenders over top of Kirk, instead of away from him.
There are four receivers against five defenders here.
Only when Lawrence gets a dominant ‘X’ receiver who can win one-on-one on the outside, will this look work in his favor. Otherwise, the offense will have to draw up more innovative plays in the red zone.
They could start by using more pre-snap motion.
In the first four weeks of the season, when the Jaguars put the targeted receiver in motion, Lawrence went 4-for-5 with two touchdowns, per Sports Info Solutions. In Weeks 5 through 8, the Jaguars have only put their target receiver in motion once.
Pre-snap motion allows the quarterback to locate mismatches in order to get the ball out quickly. Which is imperative for Lawrence.
On two of the interceptions that happened in the red zone this season, Houston cornerback Derek Stingley Jr. and Denver safety Justin Simmons both followed Lawrence when he rolled out of the pocket.
Now when defenses are in zone coverage, that makes the windows smaller, so any hesitation or incoming blitz, will cause problems.
Defenses have made these adjustments outside the red zone as well…
Exploiting weaknesses with zone coverage
The biggest adjustment from early in the season to late, has been the increased number of zone coverage called against Jacksonville’s offense.
Head coach Doug Pederson’s offense has a high rate of mesh concepts. One way to eliminate the success of shallow crossers is to drop into a zone coverage and force the quarterback to remain patient and throw into windows in a timely manner.
Lawrence is now forced to sit in the pocket and wait for his receivers to get open. This has led to second guessing his decisions over the middle.
Circling back to the chart where Lawrence has the sixth best EPA per dropback, yet his accuracy is twice as bad as the quarterbacks above him.
When looking at his mechanics, it could be a contributor to the lack of accuracy.
In the clip below, we can see how he dips his back shoulder when trying to get the ball to Kirk, which leads to this pass sailing.
Defenses have let their secondaries sit in zone as they bring pressure. Lawrence will have to tweak the way he gets the ball out in order to hit those second level receivers with more accuracy.
The tweak in his mechanics will certainly help when it comes to hitting the intermediate and deep routes. The great news is that it is such a minor fix.
Conclusion
When looking around the entire NFL, teams are averaging 20.76 points per game this season, which is the lowest output since the 2017 season and second lowest over the past decade (per Jonathan Jones, CBS Sports).
This year teams are scoring touchdowns on 56.5% of trips to the red zone, which is the lowest mark since 2017. So, all in all, it seems like the Jaguars aren’t the only ones having issues scoring in the red zone.
There is a ton of upside if Lawrence can maintain his high EPA per dropback without true number one wide receiver. The Jaguars’ target share is pretty even. It’s not clear who the number one receiver is.
Yet, Lawrence is currently sitting sixth in passing attempts, and on-target throws and 11th in total yards, and boom%, per SIS.
Jalen Hurts had questionable arm strength until the Philadelphia Eagles organization got him the tools to succeed. Josh Allen really started to show promise when Stefon Diggs joined the Buffalo Bills in 2020.
So, until we see Lawrence paired with a high-caliber receiver like Calvin Ridley, we don’t know his true ceiling as an NFL quarterback.
This doesn’t mean that the Jaguars are doomed to another 3-14 season as they had under Urban Meyer in 2021, but they have the same 2-6 mark as they did after the first eight games of Meyer’s historically disastrous tenure… so the time to turn things around, if there is one, is right now.
