The Jacksonville Jaguars joined the NFL in 1995. After one losing season, they made the AFC playoffs for four consecutive seasons. Franchise icons Mark Brunell, Jimmy Smith, Tony Boselli, and Fred Taylor helped the franchise to two AFC Championship games in 1996 and 1999 but fell just short of the Super Bowl. The arrow was pointing up for Jacksonville, and the future seemed very bright in the river city. It was not to be. The 21st century has been, to say the very least, unkind to the Jaguars.
The franchise only made the playoffs three times between 2000 and 2020. A historically good one-hit-wonder defense led by Jalen Ramsey fell one lousy call short of the Super Bowl in 2017. A woeful offense could not put up enough points to hold off Tom Brady, the New England Patriots, and the referees in Foxboro. The Jaguars sank back to the bottom of the AFC. The franchise’s low point was hiring Urban Meyer for a lost 2021 season. It wasn’t all bad news. Arguably, Jacksonville drafted a franchise quarterback for the first time in franchise history.
1. Trevor Lawrence Will Look To Deliver
Trevor Lawrence was considered a can’t-miss prospect when he entered thE 2021 NFL Draft. Jacksonville had the first pick, and Meyer and Trent Baalke chose him to lead the Jaguars back to relevance. The strategy did not pay off for Meyer, who did not even finish the season with the team. 2021 was chalked up as a lost season, and Baalke and Shad Khan hired acclaimed quarterback whisperer and Super Bowl champion Doug Pederson to get Lawrence’s fledgling career back on track in 2022.
Jacksonville started slowly falling, posting only three wins through the first ten games heading into their bye week. Something changed over those two weeks. Since the 2022 Week 11 bye week, Lawrence has been dynamite. The Jaguars quarterback has thrown for 8,129 yards and 46 touchdowns over the last two seasons. He also led one of the greatest comebacks in NFL history after the Jaguars fell behind 27-0 to the Los Angeles Chargers before rallying to win 31-30.
Jacksonville narrowly missed the AFC playoffs in 2023 despite going 9-8 for the second season in a row. Lawrence led the Jaguars to back-to-back winning seasons for the third time in franchise history. Lawrence struggled at times with poor play and injuries in 2023, but this did not create doubts within the organization. The Jaguars inked Lawrence to a five-year 275m deal. The franchise is counting on him to take another step forward in 2024, and they are paying him what the Cincinnati Bengals are paying Joe Burrow.
Lawrence is tied with Jordan Love and Burrow for the highest per-season salary in the NFL at $55 million. The Jaguars will need to post their third winning season in a row and contend for the AFC North title if Lawrence earns his hefty price tag.
2. Jaguars Defense Under Pressure In 2024
The Jaguars’ defense ranked 22nd among NFL defenses in 2023. Jacksonville was ninth against the rush last season but finished 26th in passing defense and 17th in scoring defense. Amazingly, according to Pro Football Focus, the Jaguars were seventh in third-down conversions allowed. This is a stunning statistical anomaly, given that PFF graded them as the 28th pass-rushing defense.
The Jaguars posted 40 sacks last season, the 25th-best total in the NFL. The sack total is even more astonishing, considering that Travon Walker and Josh Hines-Allen accounted for 27.5 of those sacks. The next leading player on the team was Roy Robertson-Harris, with 3.5. Baalke and Pederson invested significant draft capital and actual capital in the hopes of bolstering the interior of the defensive line to match their impressive pass-rushing tandem.
Jacksonville drafted Maason Smith in the second round of the 2024 NFL draft from LSU and gambled 51 million dollars on Arik Armstead in free agency to improve in the trenches. By all reports, Smith had an impressive training camp but appeared buried on the opening day depth chart. Armstead spent nine seasons playing for the San Francisco 49ers. He has struggled with injuries over the last two seasons and is five years removed from posting the only double-digit sack performance of his career. Jacksonville will need to get production from more of their defensive players to contend.
3. Doug Pederson Looks To Prove Doubters Wrong
Pederson took over as the Philadelphia Eagles head coach in 2016. After a 7-9 finish in his first season, he led the Eagles to their first Super Bowl championship in 2017. He was hailed as a gutsy gambler behind plays like the “Philly Special” that helped the Eagles defeat Tom Brady, Bill Belichick, and the New England Patriots. He followed that up with two 9-7 seasons, and following a complete collapse in 2020, he was fired.
After sitting out one season, Pederson has gone 18-16 in his two seasons as the Jacksonville head coach. The Jaguars made the playoffs in his first season, posted an all-time playoff classic in his first game, and battled the Kansas City Chiefs in Arrowhead for most of his second before succumbing to Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid. Pederson raised his playoff record to five wins in eight tries.
The Jaguars started with just three wins in Pederson’s first ten games. After the 2022 bye week, the team went on a tear, winning 12 of the next 15 regular season games. Under Pederson’s leadership, the franchise emerged as a power player in the AFC and entered the 2023 bye week riding high atop the AFC South. However, the team regressed and collapsed in the second half of the 2023 season, losing six of nine games. The Jaguars will win the AFC South title if the head coach performs at the level that saw the Jaguars post 12 wins between the 2022 and 2023 bye weeks.
Final Thoughts
The Jaguars are not a run-of-the-mill NFL franchise. The 2024 team has a chance to give River City what it richly deserves and has patiently waited for a quarter of a century: a winning football team. Jacksonville came out of nowhere in 2022 and, despite stumbling in 2023, still managed to post consecutive winning seasons. The Jaguars have one of the most intriguing sets of weapons in the entire league, and the city is desperate to cheer them on to playoff success. If the Jaguars answer their three big questions, Jacksonville might get that chance. The Jaguars open their season on Sunday at 1 pm on the road against the Miami Dolphins.
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