‘Great Opportunites To Teach’: Learning How To Finish Games Is the Next Step for the Jaguars

The Jaguars' offense found its spark in Week 6 due to a Trevor Lawrence bounce-back effort that saw him rush for two touchdowns and throw for one more while playing turnover-free football for the first time in three weeks. The Jaguars also got significant contributions from its rushing attack, allowing flexibility with their playcalling and keeping the Colts' defense on their heels all afternoon. Despite these positive developments, it didn’t reflect in the win column.

Unlike their Week two encounter, the Colts came to play, emerging as victors in a 34-27 dogfight led by a vintage Matt Ryan performance and a dominant showing from top wideout Michael Pittman Jr.

From the Jaguars' perspective, this loss came down to one stop late in the fourth quarter. Quarterback Trevor Lawrence gave the Jags the lead with under three minutes to play, finding a wide-open Christian Kirk in the endzone to make it a 27-26 ball game. This didn’t deter the Colts, who in the final 23 seconds of this contest scored the game-deciding touchdown and hand the Jaguars their fourth loss of the season.

Simply put, The Jaguars have to find a way to win these tight battles. Head Coach Doug Pederson made clear that this is something the team must improve on and learn from as the season progresses.

“Yeah, I mean, look this is one of the things we talk about a lot, it’s the finish, right? Credit them,” Pederson said.

“Their game plan obviously was not to huddle as much and try to play a little tempo and get the ball out quickly. Try to eliminate some of your pass rush that way. They did a good job with that. Our guys battled for 60 minutes. We just got to find a time, a place, a play somewhere that we can win these games. It’s obviously an opportunity to do that, and our guys will be better. We’ll be better for it as we go. Great opportunities to teach.”

For the Jaguars players, the inability to finish in the Colts game has them rightfully upset and on the same page as the coaching staff in terms of working on ways to improve their crunch-time play. For quarterback Trevor Lawrence, there is hope that player frustration can lead to the determination to take that next step.

“Yeah, obviously it’s – we’ve had a few of those this year, so it’s frustrating,” Lawrence said. “It’s tough. Not as much frustrating, just those are the games – we feel like we could have won every game that we’ve been in this year. That’s the NFL though, so there is a lot of teams that can say that. At the end of the day just matters if you win or lose, so continuing to find ways to go and finish and win these games. Yeah, obviously going to be a lot to learn from today. There was some interesting situations that I think everywhere, players, like we can handle better.

But the Jaguars are still figuring it out. Just like in their other three losses this season, they are left wondering what went wrong in key situations, and how they can fix it.

"There were some tough situations, and at the end of the day I think we did take a big step offensively. What was that, 20-play drive at the end, just the confidence that was in that huddle, it was cool to see. Just wouldn’t want to be beside anybody else in there. Just proud of those guys," Lawrence said. "Defensively too, made some big plays. It’s really just on all of us to find ways to execute better. I know offensively we had a drive where I missed a big throw on third down on the plus 40 or so. It was really the plus 30, 32-yard line on third down. Got to hit that one to Christian (Kirk). So there are plays you think about and kick yourself over, and it’s just how we can all get better and out ourselves in position to just go win it, not just be close.

"That’s what’s frustrating. I really believe in the team that we have. I know we have that confidence no matter who we’re playing that we can go win, and that’s huge obviously. Eventually, we got to go and win those games, and we know that. There is a lot of things we can learn from and get better at. We’re obviously taking it in, and emotions are high. Biggest thing is we got to stick together. We’re all in it together. No matter what the result was, we all have our part and we got to look in the mirror, kind of same thing we said last week, and address it and move on this week.”