National Football League

Fading Jaguars keep making same mistakes: ‘The urgency has got to pick up’

Published Dec. 19, 2023 4:47 p.m. ET

It feels like this Jaguars season is slipping away.

They're playing their worst football late in the year, when contenders are supposed to be at their best. Jacksonville is now on a three-game losing streak following its Sunday night loss to Baltimore, dropping to 0-3 in December. It's the Jaguars' first three-game losing streak since early 2022.

And it's not just the losing. It's how they're losing. It's how they've shot themselves in the foot with things they say are controllable and fixable, then keep making many of those same mistakes weekly — now at the expense of their stranglehold on the AFC South.

Jacksonville may very well still claim a second straight division title — the Jags are in a three-way tie with the Colts and Texans for first place at 8-6, holding tiebreakers over both teams — but it's difficult to envision the kind of playoff run many felt was inevitable entering this season.

"We know what we got to do," receiver Jamal Agnew said Sunday. "We got to take it one day at a time still, but I'm going to keep saying it: The urgency has got to pick up."

Jacksonville's offense, which has been inconsistent all year, reached a new low last week.

The Jags reached plus territory five times and had zero points to show for it.

Quarterback Trevor Lawrence had a particularly bad game. On back-to-back drives to end the first half, he had a red-zone lost fumble without getting touched, then showed an astounding lack of situational awareness. He completed a 36-yard pass to Zay Jones that brought the Jaguars to the 5-yard line in the closing seconds of the second quarter. But instead of spiking the ball to stop the clock — the Jaguars were out of timeouts — Jacksonville went hurry-up and Lawrence erred in completing a 1-yard pass to rookie Parker Washington, who was tackled in bounds. The Jags couldn't get lined up in time to get another play off.

"We're just giving points away, and it's hard," coach Doug Pederson said. "We're making it too hard."

Lawrence had a second lost fumble in the fourth quarter — he was strip-sacked by the Ravens' Justin Madubuike — but the biggest concern is that he's in concussion protocol, which Pederson revealed at the end of Sunday's press conference. The QB could be sidelined this week for a must-win game vs. Tampa. Then there's Jones, the Jags' No. 3 wide receiver, who suffered a hamstring injury on Sunday and will be week-to-week. He might not play either. And that's on top of the team already being without leading receiver Christian Kirk, who must miss at least two more games on injured reserve.

NFL Rankings: How far have the Jaguars fallen?

Between health issues and miscommunication and execution woes and drops and penalties and turnovers, the Jaguars offense is inspiring little confidence for the stretch run. Jacksonville has one of the league's worst rushing attacks, too — it ranks 26th with 98 rushing yards per game — and the defense has been far too inconsistent outside of edge rusher Josh Allen to feel optimistic that it can carry the team. A Jaguars defense that kept a Lamar Jackson-led offense in check for three quarters is the same unit that allowed more than a 70% completion rate for 665 yards and five total touchdowns between the Browns' Joe Flacco and Bengals' Jake Browning the previous two weeks. It's the same defense that got bulldozed by the NFC-leading 49ers in Week 10.

The Jaguars are 3-5 this season against non-AFC South teams that have either already clinched a playoff berth or remain in the hunt, including 0-4 since the start of November.

"Right now, we're just not good enough to pull these games out against good football teams," Pederson said after the Ravens game. "That's the honest truth. Until we figure that out, it's going to be rough."

Just last week, Pederson was asked about the recurring pre-snap penalties and he acknowledged that they've been showing up in practice. Allen on Monday also indicated that the little mistakes the team seems to make every week begin in practice and that "it starts with the leadership." The fact that practice habits are a talking point this late in the season for a team that has Super Bowl aspirations feels like a major concern.

Less than three weeks ago, the Jaguars were 8-3, riding the high of a road victory against the Texans that punctuated their hold on the AFC South. Now they're scrambling for answers.

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This time last year, they were already in their groove of what became a surprising run to the AFC divisional round.

"I think so much sometimes we focus on the negative all the time and not the positive. We've got to find the good, too, and fill our player's heads with positives this time of year," Pederson said. "We feel like we're still a good football team; we've played like it at times. It's just at times we don't look very good."

Can the Jaguars find the good consistently before it's too late?

Ben Arthur is the AFC South reporter for FOX Sports. He previously worked for The Tennessean/USA TODAY Network, where he was the Titans beat writer for a year and a half. He covered the Seattle Seahawks for SeattlePI.com for three seasons (2018-20) prior to moving to Tennessee. You can follow Ben on Twitter at @benyarthur.