The Jacksonville Jaguars open defense of a year in which they earned a home playoff game and won it, in dramatic fashion, turning a 27-0 deficit to the Los Angeles Chargers into a 31-30 postseason win for Trevor Lawrence and company.
Two years ago, the Jaguars made Lawrence the first pick in the National Football League draft. His college credentials lined up well with the other three highest ever rated quarterbacks entering the pros. That being John Elway, Peyton Manning and Andrew Luck. In Lawrence’s rookie year he was led by a head coach that gave college coaches a bad name.
Urban Meyer was just another name to add to coaches that did well on the collegiate level, but didn’t have what it took to win in the pros. Steve Spurrier, Bud Wilkerson, Nick Saban were all abysmal failures as head coaches in the NFL, and led dynasties in the college ranks. What the horrible job by Meyer did for the Jaguars is give them one more worst record in the league season in order to be awarded for their ineptness with the first pick in the draft.
They got their bluechip signal caller and an extra dip into the college pool to bolster a roster that has a number of very good players. It would be easy now to say the Detroit Lions and Jacksonville Jaguars are mirror images of each other. Both are recovering from years of horrible results that allowed them to build talented rosters with players coming into their prime years.
The Lions and Jaguars have similar talented rosters and appear poised to take a deep dive into postseason play.
If we group the Lions and Jaguars on similar trajectories and the Lions already won on the road this week, shouldn’t we be confident Jacksonville is capable of running over an Indianapolis group with a new head coach and rookie quarterback? Shane Steichen is the new head coach on the Colts sideline, and Indianapolis’ offense on the field has been turned over to their rookie quarterback and fourth player taken in last April’s draft, Anthony Richardson.