The 2022 Jacksonville Jaguars were defined by the comeback, closing the season with five straight wins to win the division and an epic storm-from-behind victory over the Los Angeles Chargers in the postseason.
The 2023 Jags flipped the script, collapsing in every fashion down the stretch.
Sunday’s 28-20 loss to the Tennessee Titans, who were eliminated from the postseason three weeks ago, completed a 1-5 close to the season that saw Doug Pederson’s team lose a commanding division lead.
The Jags came out flat in Week 18, watching Titans running back Derrick Henry zoom up and down the field and quarterback Trevor Lawrence throw two first-half interceptions. Another comeback bid stalled as the star QB was stuffed on a fourth down at the 1-yard-line with a chance to get even with 7:13 left in the contest. On Jacksonville’s last gasp, Lawrence, who’d played through injuries all season, missed badly on his final two passes of the campaign.
“The words now don’t really mean much,” Lawrence said via the team website. “It’s fresh, and everyone’s going to deal with this in their own way. You should, everybody does, but you should feel sick, you should feel disappointed and frustrated in yourself, in the offensive, the team. Everything. You put in so much work. Coming in here, (if) we win, we make the playoffs. We have a home playoff game. And we are leaving here, we’re going home, and we’re done. We all understand where we’re at and how disappointing it is, the finish we had this year. We have to be better.”
Added Lawrence: “It hurts to not be able to finish and you look at where we were at one point in the season and just finished really, really poorly. We kind of gave it away.”
The Jaguars became the sixth team in the last 25 seasons to start 8-3 or better and miss the playoffs, per NFL Research.
“Ultimately, we have to play together and find a spark,” outside linebacker Josh Allen said. “I feel like last year we had a spark and we lived, and we just followed that and rode that wave. This year, we were looking for it too much, hoping that it was going to come, and it never came. We had a determination. We had a want. This year, we were looking for that spark. And we never got that lit.”
The Jags’ candle was officially extinguished Sunday, paving the way for the Houston Texans to grab the division title and the Pittsburgh Steelers to snag a wild card.
The collapse can’t be saddled on one person or one aspect. The defense couldn’t stop Henry and the Titans’ run game Sunday. Lawrence and the offense continued to turn the ball over down the stretch; the run game lacked consistency. Every phase of the game let down Jacksonville.
With the 2024 offseason coming earlier than planned in Duval, it will be interesting to see what changes are made by Pederson and general manager Trent Baalke in the coming months. The status quo won’t be enough.
