When the Jaguars made the decision to fire Doug Pederson, a big talking point from Shad Khan was the team’s predictability on both sides of the ball. Fans likely agreed with the sentiment but maybe were unsure what exactly about the team was so predictable.
Let’s take a look at some things that made the 2024 Jaguars just so darn predictable.
Offense
Play action and motion have been almost a necessity in today’s game. I wrote an article about this very trend back in February. The Jaguars, however, didn’t evolve under Doug Pederson and in fact, devolved over the course of his tenure.
For reasons beyond my understanding, the Jaguars fell from 8th to 16th to 32nd in snap-motion rate across Doug Pederson’s three seasons. Unsurprisingly, their offensive performance fell along with it. No team ran less snap-motion than the Jaguars, something predominantly used to help diagnose defensive coverages.
Who and where the Jaguars looked when passing was also about as predictable as it gets.
According to Fantasy Points, the Jaguars led the NFL in targeting first-reads each of Doug Pederson’s three seasons.
Not only that, the routes themselves were predictable as the Jaguars targeted ‘hitches’ and ‘outs’ on 44% of their attempts. To add further insult to injury, they also ranked 30th in completion rate when targeting those routes. The team very much avoided the middle of the
field, just 25th in the NFL doing so.
Defense
Sadly for Jags’ fans, the defense was even more predictable than the offense last season. The pass-rush especially so as the Jaguars featured the lowest blitz and heavy-blitz rates in the NFL. According to Match Quarters, the Jaguars also hardly ever ran stunts either (30th).
Jacksonville nearly matched last year’s season total of five sacks by non-D-Linemen in just three preseason games. Jack Kiser, Andrew Wingard, Ventrell Miller, and Yasir Abdullah all got themselves a tally in the sack column, previewing the team’s new blitz packages for 2025.
When transitioning to the secondary, Jacksonville ran more man coverage and press-man coverage than just about every other team in the NFL. Only the Lions ran more man coverage.
Montaric Brown and Tyson Campbell finished first and second, respectively, in press coverage rates last season per Field Vision’s data.
It was really feast or famine when it came to coverage types as well. The Jags ranked top-4 in their usages of Cover-1 and Cover-2, while ranking 31st and 32nd in Cover-0 and Cover-3.
Their heavy use of man coverage no doubt played a part.
Overview
The good news? All of these points figure to change under the Jaguars’ new regime. The teams already using far more motion, utilizing a diverse route tree, getting creative with blitz packages, and mixing up coverages throughout the preseason. It will be exciting to see just
what Liam Coen, Grant Udinski, and Anthony Campanile have in store once the regular season kicks off
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