Jaguars are a weird 4-1 team

DUUUUVAL Due a Fall?

The last time the Jaguars went 4-1 was in 2007 when the team was quarterbacked by David Garrard and coached by Jack Del Rio, which at the time was Jacksonville’s first 4-1 start since 1999. Few fans other than Mariners fans can empathize with what Jaguars fans have endured for the past 25 years.

Did you realize that the Jaguars went to the playoffs as many times in their first five years of existence (4) as they have since Y2K?

Similarly to the happenings in the ALDS, the Jaguars are enjoying a bit of success but are far from escaping skepticism based on a well-earned reputation. Jacksonville is 4-1 for the first time in 18 years and I know that anyone reading this newsletter feels the pressure that the Seahawks are under to not underestimate the Jaguars just because they are the Jaguars.

This is not just a fluky 4-1 team: They are coming off of a win over the perennially competitive Chiefs, handed the Niners their only loss of the season, and beat a Texans team that won the division in 2023 and 2024.

As a matter of fact, I found this pertinent entry about Jacksonville from 2007 and if you changed the years around it could fit just as well today:

Jacksonville (4-1) got a rare rout against the team that has caused it the most headaches in recent years. Houston, which had won four of the previous six meetings between the AFC South clubs, essentially knocked the Jaguars out of play-off contention in 2004 and 2006.

Head coach Liam Coen was hired into a job that carried the greatest degree of difficulty and has already won as many games this season as Doug Pederson won all of last season when the Jaguars finished 4-13. Trevor Lawrence was arguably the most publicly derided high-profile starter in the league going into the year and now he’s at least “a winner”.

By the most basic accounts of what it means to be a good football team, the Jacksonville Jaguars are passing with flying colors:

• Win most of your games

• Beat good teams

• Stunt on the haters

• Do whatever this is and become the hero:

And then I think about the 2007 Jaguars and I’m reminded that oh yeah David Garrard turned out to be not that good and Jack Del Rio turned out to be not that good and then team team, although they went 11-5 and knocked the Steelers* out of the playoffs, turned out to be not that good.

*Pittsburgh had been spiraling for 2 months and still nearly completed an 18-point fourth quarter comeback

The next season, the Jaguars went 5-11 and they didn’t even post another winning record again until 2017! They went 10 years without a winning season!

So that’s where a very reasonable person could conclude — totally absent and unrelated to the fact that the Seahawks are playing the Jaguars this week and of course Seattle could lose this game — that in addition to Coen’s start being a very interesting story, this Jacksonville team is super weird and unpredictable and maybe won’t have staying power.

If the Jaguars are not a flash in the pan, it will have to be because they became a far more complete team than the one we’ve seen through five games because I’m noticing a lot of weird flaws to keep in mind. Not the least of which is just how hard the Jaguars tried to lose that game to the Chiefs, but got lucky because Kansas City “un-tried” harder than they did:

To emphasize that Seaside Joe is not just a hater, let’s review some odd truths about a 4-1 team that is stuck somewhere in between having the best record in the NFL and having to decide if they should get a new quarterback despite their team success.

They’re trading their ‘core’ players away

Last summer, the Jaguars extended cornerback Tyson Campbell to a four-year, $76 million contract. This morning, they traded Campbell to the Browns five GAMES into that extension.

Obviously they did this because Campbell is having a bad season:

But to what extent do you see first place teams give up on players who they considered cornerstone pieces in recent history? Especially without any financial incentive to do so: Campbell will have made $30 million from Jacksonville for the five games he played. That’s money just from the Jaguars, the Browns don’t have to pick up any of it!

They’re also not getting a phenomenal player in return, as Greg Newsome II is just a different former first round corner who is struggling. There’s no magic to this, the Jaguars simply gave up on him despite defensive coordinator Anthony Camanile saying this a couple of months ago:

“I really am really, really fired up about everything he’s done this offseason because he’s competed so hard in the practices,” Campanile said recently. “He’s fighting for every rep, whether it’s at the top of the route, on the line of scrimmage, in the break area.

“He’s just really trying to play with a lot of detail, and I think a lot of that shows up if you were to sit and watch his individual. He’s competing his tail off in individual.”

If you were “really fired up” about a player who the team just paid $30 million to would you endorse trading him because five games (Campbell played virtually every snap of) didn’t go that well? And it’s not just Campanile, Coen was also praising Campbell in the offseason.

Fine that’s just coach lip service and it happens all the time. Even so, the Jaguars are 4-1 and lead the league in turnovers forced and interceptions and Campbell was allowing 50% completions but was also so bad that the team was ready to eat $30 million to just give the job to a different underwhelming cornerback.

Interesting.

Trevor Lawrence is having his worst season?

Of all the times to criticize “QB wins”, this would be among the most prudent. This is Lawrence’s fifth season and here’s how his current stats would rank among the previous years:

• 60.4% completions (2nd-worst in front of rookie year)

• 3.6% TD rate (2nd-worst in front of rookie year)

• 3% INT rate (worst)

• 41.7% success rate (worst)

• 78.2 passer rating (2nd-worst in front of rookie year)

• 48.8 QBR (2nd-worst in front of rookie year)

• 6.3 Y/A (2nd-worst in front of rookie year)

• 3.43% sack rate (best)

So other than his rookie year with Urban Meyer (who was fired midseason), this is the worst statistical season of Lawrence’s career. The Jaguars hired Coen to bring a McVay-ian gameplan to the offense and traded up to draft Travis Hunter second overall to pair with Brian Thomas Jr. and yet in the face of all of that Lawrence is playing really bad football.

Lawrence is 29th in completion rate, 28th in touchdown rate, 29th in interception rate, 29th in passer rating, and 22nd in net yards per pass attempt, even though he’s the fourth-least sacked QB in the NFL.

If you look at the QBs in his vicinity in passer rating, you’ll find Joe Flacco (traded), Cam Ward (rookie), Jake Browning (benched for Flacco), Geno Smith, Russell Wilson (benched), Bryce Young, and Michael Penix. Lawrence is having a worse season than quarterbacks like Spencer Rattler, Justin Fields, and Tua Tagovailoa, all of whom have lost four games, and yet his team is 4-1.

But in addition to being absurdly talented and having prototypical QB size built to withstand those tackle attempts on the final play against Kansas City, Lawrence is unreliable and to this point has choked in big games. There were multiple times he could have choked away Monday Night Football, but the Chiefs tripped harder…a 2-3 Chiefs team that we can hardly yet compare to the ones of the past ten years. Here’s one write-up of the last drive:

We got the entire Lawrence experience on that drive alone. The former No. 1 overall pick was up and down Monday, with his legs bailing him out of some bad spots, but he also had two critical turnovers. Even on the game-winning drive, Lawrence took a bad sack and a delay of game penalty, and things weren’t looking pretty. Nor did his TD run, which started with Lawrence on his keister.

And for that reason, nobody should be that surprised if the Jaguars attempt to trade Trevor Lawrence in 2026 if he’s still among the league leaders in interceptions and Jacksonville finishes either out of the playoffs or gets blown out in the playoffs.

Although a trade carries a $50.5 million dead cap hit in 2026, it’s nothing that they can’t withstand and the Jaguars just proved that the money doesn’t matter. So yes, the Jaguars are 4-1 and Lawrence is the quarterback of the team, but then you remember that David Garrard was more trustworthy and he’s just David Garrard.

Terrible third down defense

This is an opportunity for Klint Kubiak’s resume and Sam Darnold’s third down stats to get fat. Even though the Jaguars are 8th in points allowed and 6th in points per drive allowed and 1st in turnovers forced, they are also:

• 30th in third down defense (47%)

• 23rd in total yards allowed

• 22nd in yards per carry allowed (4.6)

The Jaguars have allowed almost half of all third down attempts (31-of-66) to be converted!

The Seahawks are converting 43.6% of their third down attempts already.

On 21 third-and-short (1-3 yards) plays, the Jaguars have allowed 13 first downs and 2 touchdowns, a 71.5% conversion rate.

On 17 third-and-medium (4-6 yards) plays, the Jaguars have allowed 11-of-17 passing (no rush attempts) for 2 touchdowns and 9 first downs.

Every defense is going to be at least half-decent on third-and-Long, but so long as Seattle is giving themselves opportunities for third-and-medium/short, this is a defense that has not been feared. Which is just an odd thing to say about any defense leading the NFL in takeaways.

That being said, WHY do they lead the league in takeaways:

• Devin Lloyd, a linebacker, has 4 of their 10 interceptions

• The other linebacker, Foyesade Oluokun, has 1

• Jourdan Lewis is the only CB with an INT (he has 2)

• Three safeties have one each

• The Jaguars intercepted Jake Browning 3x

• Brock Purdy, CJ Stroud, and Bryce Young 2x each

• Patrick Mahomes 1x

Browning is for sure not fit for the NFL, whereas Purdy is turnover prone and Young’s future in the league as a starter is anything but solid.

I’m not putting down Jacksonville’s interceptions — that’s how interceptions work, you tend to get more of them against lesser teams — but it is important to not how much heavy lifting these turnovers have done for the Jaguars 4-1 record:

Beat Texans 17-10

Up 10-3 in the 4th quarter vs HOU, Stroud is intercepted, setting up a potentially easier win if they close it out. But the Jags three-and-out then shortly later Lawrence is intercepted, letting Stroud hit a 50-yard bomb to tie the gmae 10-10. Jacksonville turns it over on downs when Lawrence doesn’t convert a 4th-and-2 pass, but just as Houston is about to take a lead, Nico Collins fumbles the ball (ironically it was forced by Campbell) and sets up JAX for he go-ahead touchdown.

On the verge of tying the game with :27 seconds left, Stroud throws an interception because the ball was tipped behind the LOS.

Beat 49ers 26-21

After Parker Washington gives JAX a 26-14 lead in the third quarter on a punt return, the Jags let SF back in it on a 92-yard touchdown drive by Purdy that only takes 4 minutes. Cam Little misses a 47-yard field goal and the Niners are already at midfield with a chance to take the lead. But Purdy, who has played worse than Mac Jones, fumbles on a sack by former teammate Arik Armstead.

Beat Chiefs 31-28

We already went over this a little, but Lawrence throws a pick deep in his own territory in the fourth quarter, setting up the Chiefs to a quick tying score. The Jaguars kick a field goal to take a 24-21 lead, but then Kansas City drives 86 yards and never once sees third down! They didn’t see ONE third down on a 6 and a half minute drive!

Of all the ways to look bad while beating the Chiefs, the Jaguars found all of ‘em.

“We can pick apart any team’s 4-1 record”

Absolutely! But I wanted to specifically address that there are still good defenses and bad defenses, there are good quarterbacks and bad quarterbacks, there are lucky moments and unlucky moments…

For a Jacksonville defense that has not allowed that many points and leads the league in takeaways, the Jaguars total numbers are getting a lot of help from playing the Panthers in Week 1 (26-10) and the Bengals in Week 2 (the Jaguars LOST that game to Browning, by the way) and the 13 turnovers that they forced in the first four weeks. Aside from those takeaways, which come and go, the Jaguars defense has been on the whole mediocre, if not bad.

For a quarterback who was the top high school recruit, the number one pick, and paid $55 million per season, Lawrence should be closer to the bench than MVP conversation. BTJ (16 catches on 38 targets, 244 yards), Travis Hunter (16 catches on 24 targets, 182 yards), and Brenton Strange (20/24, 204 yards) have combined for 0 touchdowns through five games.

The Jaguars have spent 3 first round picks on 2 wide receivers in the last two drafts and somehow they have a $55m QB who doesn’t trust them or they don’t trust him.

Although Thomas had excellent rookie stats in 2024, he was essentially just as good with Mac Jones as he was with Lawrence, signaling that the Jaguars offense might be just as good without him, if not better:

The Jaguars sunk their resources into trying to fix Lawrence — at the cost of the defense — and neither side is better for it. And yet…Yes, the Jaguars are 4-1 and they’ve beaten good teams. I can’t take that away from them, nor am I trying to convince you that the Jaguars suck, as always I’m just observing stuff that happens that matters to the Seahawks and sharing what piques my interest with you.

The Jaguars are a 4-1 team that could absolutely beat the Seahawks on Sunday. However, there’s a good amount of evidence I see that Seattle shouldn’t lose this game so long as they don’t beat themselves.

Seaside Joe 2411