'Be Water': How a Bruce Lee Quote and 3 Commandments Will Guide the Jaguars' Offense

“Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow, or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”

The words of martial-arts legend Bruce Lee still ring true today. For the Jacksonville Jaguars' offense, the words are more than just a memorable quote. It is a mindset they hope will guide them through the 2022 season.

Last year, the Jaguars' offense was drowning. Now, they hope to be like water.

"Be flexible, you know, water is fluid, it can’t be contained into one thing but it can become whatever it needs to be, and ultimately, it’s one of the most powerful forces on Earth," Jaguars offensive coordinator Press Taylor said on Thursday.

If the Jaguars are trying to be like water this year, then they were the eroding rock upon which water slammed in 2022. Now, under Taylor and new head coach Doug Pederson, who will call plays, the Jaguars are hoping to evolve. To retake shape. To be versatile and flexible.

To be like water.

"So, we’ve talked about that as an offense. we need to be able to do what we need to do to win the game. If that means, hey, we’re going to have to throw the ball sixty times to win this game, we want to be able to do that," Taylor said.

"If it’s that we’re going to run the ball, we think we’re going to throw the ball and we go in and we have to run the ball. We want just the flexibility as an offense to be able to do whatever it takes to win the game.”

The Jaguars lacked this type of flexibility in years past. In the last four years, the Jaguars have finished No. 27, No. 27, No. 24, and No. 30 in offensive DVOA, per Football Outsiders. This included the Jaguars finishing No. 30, No. 26, No. 23, and No. 30 in passing DVOA. And since 2017, the Jaguars are tied for last in the NFL in explosive pass-rate at 7%.

In short, the Jaguars' offense has been anything but like water. It hasn't been flexible and adaptable. It has been stagnant, going backward and folding at each step of adversity in its way.

That is why Pederson and Taylor were hired. That is why the Jaguars hope the former Philadelphia Eagles coaches can change an offensive identity that hasn't surrounded the Jaguars in, well, decades.

"I think we’re going to create a lot of explosives down the field. That’s something that we’re really confident in with the guys we have," quarterback Trevor Lawrence said on Wednesday.

"We have some great backs, and that goes with our offensive commandments: protect the football, create explosives, ball security, all those things. There’s more of them, too, that we could talk about. But that’s what we live by and that’s who we try to be.”

It is under those commandments that Lawrence and the Jaguars' offense hope to improve upon. Last year, the Jaguars were among the worst teams on third-down, in the red-zone, and in terms of ball security and explosive plays.

As a result, it is no surprise the theme of the Jaguars' offense is to change all of those. The three commandments of offense they have instilled this offseason will be the three they try to live by with each passing week.

"We have three: protect the ball, we want to create explosives and eliminate negatives, and we want to be a great situational offense," Taylor said.

"So, those are kind of the three we preach, the three we always come back to, that’s what we believe is going to - when you look back on a game, and you just throw an umbrella at those three commandments, that’s going to reveal how you played. Now, it may not always show up in wins, losses, and all that, but those are the three things we believe are the most important things to dictate the outcome of games a lot of times.”

What constitutes an explosive play for the Jaguars? While some may think it is a run of 10 yards and a pass of 20, Taylor explained exactly how the Jaguars see it.

"We’re kind of, this is an analytics thing, everybody can be a little bit different, but really, we’ve gotten off 16 yards for pass, and 12 for a run and I think that’s where, somebody smarter than me, the EPA and all that kind of changes when you hit those numbers," Taylor said. "So that’s kind of what we go off of right there.”

After years of the Jaguars' offense looking like pulling teeth, they hope to change their identity this year. The Jaguars have rarely, if ever, been known for their offense. Now, they hope to change that and adapt to whatever comes to them.

"We feel like we have a number of great players here in a lot of different positions. So, we hope it’s built to where the ball just goes to where the ball is supposed to go based on the way the defense plays and we’re always taking what’s given right there," Taylor said.

"If there tends to, throughout the course of the game, be a matchup that’s strength for us, then we would do everything we could to explore it and I think that’s the right thing to do.”