What Lessons Can the Jaguars Learn From the 2019 Season?
2019 didn't go how the Jacksonville Jaguars wanted -- or planned -- in really any sense. The key now is to learn from this experience and use it aa a reminder of how and why the team's approach failed.
The team's big-money quarterback, Nick Foles, started only four games and never took a second-half snap in a home game due to a Week 1 injury and a Week 13 benching. Jacksonville's best player entering 2019, cornerback Jalen Ramsey, played only three games with the team and was traded to the Los Angeles Rams for a haul of draft picks before the midpoint of the season.
And executive vice president of football operations Tom Coughlin, the football czar who was supposed to return Jacksonville to prominence, was fired before the season ended following the NFL Players Association coming out with a scathing statement against Jacksonville's inability to follow collective bargaining agreement labor rules during Coughlin's tenure.
To turn the team around in 2020, and in the foreseeable future past that, the Jaguars' brass, which includes head coach Doug Marrone and general manager Dave Caldwell, will have to reflect on the failures of 2019. To win games, Marrone and Caldwell will have to learn why the 6-10 season went so sideways and do everything in their power to apply these lessons into tangible change.
Jacksonville has gone 11-21 in the last two years and finished in last place of the AFC South in each season. This demands change. By staying the same, the Jaguars would doom themselves before the season even begins.
So, which exact lessons could the Jaguars learn from 2019?
Build depth at all levels of the team
The number one thing that hurt the Jaguars above all else in 2019 was the overall talent of the roster had taken a big step backward. Positions such as defensive tackle, defensive back, linebacker, and tight end all suffered from both injuries and below-average play, despite each position being a strength in 2017. Jacksonville's backups rarely looked like NFL-caliber players, sans Tre Herndon, Donald Payne, and Nick O'Leary, and once the Jaguars saw the slightest bit of injuries, the entire team tanked.
This seems to be something Caldwell is already cognizant of, considering some of the comments he made at the press conference which followed the announcement of his return to the team in 2020.
"Especially this season with the distractions and some of the adversity between losing our quarterback after Week 1 and making sure we had a capable person to fill in the roles and looking at that and realizing that it is just not the quarterback position, but we had injuries at linebacker and other positions that we have to make sure that we are going to have that during the season," Caldwell said. "We have to make sure that we have people capable of coming in here and filling those roles and making sure they can do more than one phase – both special teams and offense or defense.”
How Caldwell goes about addressing this depth will likely shape the Jaguars season. If he ignores making tangible improvements at the positions, as the team did before 2019, then results are unlikely to change.
Despite the investments in the offensive line, it needs to improve substaintially
The primary culprit that caused the Jaguars to score a meager three rushing touchdowns in 2019? An offensive line that rarely imposed its will.
Jacksonville has heavy investments at all five spots along the line, but the results have yet indicated most of the moves will pay off. Left tackle Cam Robinson, a second-round pick in the 2017 NFL Draft, has dealt with injuries and inconsistent play, specifically as a pass protector. Left guard Andrew Norwell, who the Jaguars made one of the highest-paid guards in the NFL in 2018, has yet to live up to his lofty contract and his bad plays typically look worse than most others. Center Brandon Linder, another lineman the Jaguars have handed a big contract to in recent years, has been solid but unspectacular, and just played his first-ever 16-game season in 2019.
Right guard A.J. Cann was given a new contract after the 2018 season but had to fight off second-year lineman Will Richardson for all of 2019. He played OK in 2019 but overall was rarely more than average. Right tackle Jawaan Taylor was a second-round pick the Jaguars traded up for in 2019 and had a great rookie season, but he is likely the brightest spot.
If Caldwell and Marrone want to turn their team around, they will need to accept the fact that most of these investments have not worked out, and the offensive line simply is what it is at this point. They can't go into 2020 thinking they are solid at most of the spots, the way the franchise incorrectly entered 2019.
Understanding sunk costs can equal more wins
This is one lesson the Jaguars have refused to acknowledge for the better part of two seasons. After refusing to bench Blake Bortles for too long due to the contract extension given to him in the 2018 offseason, Jacksonville made the same fatal mistake at the position in 2019.
Instead of rolling with the hot hand in Gardner Minshew after he went 4-4 during Foles' injury, the Jaguars turned the keys back over to Foles in hope of him leading the team out of a 4-5 hole in the second half of the season. Of course, Foles' entire past as a mediocre starter sans his 2017 playoff run was a clear indication this would blow up in the Jaguars' face, and it did in a big way as Foles lasted a handful of starts before being pulled for Minshew.
Jacksonville benched Minshew because of Foles' contract, the definition of succumbing to a sunk cost. Understanding the failures of these strategies would be a big step for the Jaguars.
Become more forward-thinking on both sides of the ball
As we wrote yesterday, the Jaguars' offense has been lagged far behind other offenses throughout the NFL in terms of pre-snap shifts and motions. This is just one example of the Jaguars' inability to creatively scheme on either side of the ball in recent years, but specifically in 2019.
On offense, the Jaguars' consistently looked like a vanilla offense. Dede Westbrook was relegated to a Miami Dolphins Jarvis Landry-type role, catching only short passes and rarely used as a downfield threat. The running game lacked creativity, often asking Leonard Fournette to run it up the middle on dives and power runs, with few extra wrinkles thrown in to help the blocking in front of him. In terms of passing, Jacksonville frequently had plays where only two receivers even ran routes.
On defense, the Jaguars were hampered by the aforementioned depth issues but they were still out schemed on a weekly basis. Defensive coordinator Todd Wash rarely mixed things up from a coverage or pressure standpoint, and it reflected in the results.
For the Jaguars to add more wins to their record in 2020, it will require Marrone and his coaching staff to get outside of their comfort zone and think more creatively.
