It's a bit early to panic, but the pressure is still on at the start of a window with cap flexibility, draft equity and a generational quarterback on his rookie deal.
The Jaguars are 0–4, closing in on a dubious 20-game franchise losing streak. Their head coach, Urban Meyer, has lost only four or more games in a season twice in a lengthy coaching career that has spanned more than two decades.
There are times this season when Jacksonville has looked completely adrift on the field. Week 1 against the Texans was, unquestionably, the product of a collegiate head coach’s underestimating the extreme intricacy and perfection necessary to defeat even one of the worst teams in the NFL (one that, in some ways, seems to be actively trying to lose). While I don’t think Broncos head coach Vic Fangio, who defeated Meyer in Week 2, was being malicious when
he revealed that Meyer told him “Every week it’s like playing Alabama in the NFL,” I do think that having the quote exist in a public space provided a bit of schadenfreude for the hordes of NFL coaches who likely felt a little chapped by Meyer’s methodical entry into the professional football space. It seemed like a fitting slip from a coach who entered big-time football with the Baltimore Stars in 1984 and took more than 30 years to get a head coaching gig.Yeah, buddy. It’s tough out here!
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The Jaguars’ early season has traversed a path to this fascinating point where a team we thought might have been better—possibly a fringe playoff team like Andrew Luck’s rookie-year Colts—has already lost games to some of the worst opponents on its schedule and now faces a brutal slate in which it’ll encounter the Titans, Bills, Seahawks and 49ers before Thanksgiving, as well as some less intimidating but equally perilous matchups against defensive masterminds like Brian Flores and a Colts team that is winless for now but may not stay dormant for long. If Meyer had a difficult time matching schematic acumen with the likes of David Culley and Zac Taylor, then Frank Reich, Sean McDermott and Kyle Shanahan will cause some problems.
Meyer coaches for one of the most pragmatic ownership groups in football, but failing to show any significant improvement over the course of this next stretch of games should challenge the Khan philosophy, even after it brought the team to the brink of Super Bowl contention. I’ll go as far as to say that this next stretch of games might be one of the most important in the history of the franchise from a developmental standpoint.
This is not some hyperbole; it’s just a recognition that Meyer should be given more of a runway if the Jaguars play well against their next few opponents and should, rightfully, seriously, be considered a one-and-done candidate if the team flounders. Thursday night’s loss to the Bengals was complicated in that the performance was Jacksonville’s best of the season. If the Jags were able to sustain their scripted first half, we’d be talking about a coach with far less pressure on his back.
The problem with a sober evaluation of Meyer at this point is that Jacksonville’s struggles are almost everyone’s fault, creating a bit of a cyclical chart of blame. The Jags are also battling the ingrained perceptions we have of both Lawrence and Meyer in the collegiate space, where they have been immediate, undeniable winners.
Lawrence has completed some of the most beautiful throws of the season, which obscures the moments when he’s missed an open read on a well-designed play, like most rookies will do from time to time. Darrell Bevell has called some bad football this year and has put Lawrence in disadvantageous spots, along with the time he has spent gobbling route concepts due to Lawrence’s high football acumen and obvious arm talent. But Bevell is also nowhere near the worst play-caller a rookie quarterback has inherited this year and has actually drawn up some inventive concepts to win matchups against some of the better defenses in the league right now. Jacksonville’s defense, which was starved this offseason in order to suit Meyer’s needs for an offense befitting of Lawrence, went into Thursday night’s game as the second-worst in the NFL, according to Football Outsiders’ DVOA projections, which makes it difficult to provide the offense with any additional edge.
Meyer, obviously, sits atop this organizational chart and will inherit a majority of the blame. This is especially true with a quarterback like Lawrence, who, unlike other rookies who may find themselves smeared by a coach unable to develop them, is so obviously talented and pro-ready that he possesses an unshakable position of power within the franchise.
The fear is that pouring blind faith into his operation with this season rapidly hurdling down the tubes will result in a dangerous game of I alone can fix this heading into the trade deadline. Jacksonville already traded its 2020 first-round pick, C.J. Henderson. Meyer could easily pass off the inherited blame on the state of the roster and receive a carte blanche on dealing some of the team’s underperforming assets in an effort to accumulate more draft capital.
Doing so would push Jacksonville further down a path that could end up yielding great results, or sinking the entirety of Lawrence’s rookie contract, which would be a devastating blow to the franchise. The Jaguars’ window of contention and relevance as a franchise opens next year, when Lawrence enters the second year of his team-friendly, five-year deal with a year of NFL experience and wisdom under his belt. The team should again be approaching $100 million in salary cap space and, at least at the moment, it possesses the No. 1 pick in the 2022 draft; a class that seems to be ripe with franchise-altering defensive talent.
While there are no guarantees in life, Jaguars ownership could receive a window into the future over the coming weeks by looking closely enough. If the gradual improvement continues—and there should be plenty of neutral resources at their disposal to provide an assessment on Meyer’s in-game coaching ability, as well as the performance of his assistants against outmatched competition without obscuring the facts—they can fall back on their default mode and extend Meyer’s runway.
If, when met with a whiff of defeatism or dysfunction, power-grabbing or blame shedding, the first signs of something other than a humbled coach learning the ropes, they may have to do something that felt unthinkable a few months ago to save themselves in the long-term.
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