JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Truth be told, it’s pretty tough to watch the Jaguars’ offense right now. It seems as though just about nothing is going right, especially through the air. The Jaguars are struggling to get the ball to their playmakers and when they do, it’s seemingly a coin flip whether or not they are actually going to haul it in. Getting open is another concern.
Let’s take a look at some numbers to determine what it is that’s going wrong at the position.
Jaguars’ Receivers
Let’s start with the obvious, the drops. According to Pro Football Focus, the Jaguars lead the NFL with 21 drops. It isn’t just one player either, the entire receiver room has a hand to play.
Among the NFL’s top 95 receivers, the Jaguars’ Travis Hunter, Dyami Brown, Brian Thomas Jr, and Parker Washington rank T-58th, T-82nd, 89th, and 90th in Drop %, respectively.
According to Fantasy Points, 37% of Trevor Lawrence’s incompletions have been due to drops or receiver error. Lawrence hasn’t played well either, but it’s certainly hard to imagine a world in which he does with output like that from his receiving corps.
When Lawrence does throw a catchable ball, the Jaguars are 32nd in converting those balls into catches, according to FTN Fantasy. It isn’t just the drops, but the tougher catches that could be made, that simply aren’t. There’s just been far too much meat left on the one from the unit.
Getting open has been another issue as well. Using NextGenStats’ GPS tracking info, ESPN Analytics creates an “Open Score” on a scale of 0-100 to determine how much separation a receiver gets. The data is only updated through Week 6, but it should give us a good baseline.
It isn’t pretty for the Jaguars, who rank 19th (Dyami Brown), 31st (Brian Thomas Jr), 46th (Travis Hunter), and 61st (Parker Washington) at creating separation, among the Top-68 Wrs.
By that metric, Dyami Brown is about the only Jaguars’ receiver who’s been above average at getting open. Sadly, again, it doesn’t matter if it isn’t caught anyhow.
Brian Thomas Jr
At the forefront of it all is the Jaguars’ superstar receiver, Brian Thomas Jr. He’s struggled, big time, thus far into 2025. At times, he looks back to his old self again, see the huge touchdown against the Texans and sideline catch against the Chiefs for examples. But other times, he looks like a shell of his former self.
As mentioned, Thomas Jr ranks 89th among the Top-95 NFL receivers in drop rate. To add insult to injury, ESPN Analytics has him ranked dead last (68th) in their “Catch Score.”
When going back to FTN Fantasy’s “converting catchable balls into catches” statistic, Thomas Jr. is catching just 64,3% of the catchable balls thrown his way this season, 83rd among 83 NFL receivers.
He isn’t really doing all that much with the ball after the catch either, forcing just one missed tackle this season, compared to the nine produced by teammate Travis Hunter. His -16 yards after the catch over expectation ranks 194th among 199 receivers. It’s a tough scene all around.
If the Jaguars want to get going on offense, they need Brian Thomas Jr. He’s still their most dangerous threat and especially the team’s most dangerous deep threat. Hopefully, this is just a dry spell for the Jaguars’ young star, but whatever the case, they figure out the issues at the position and right the ship immediately.
Otherwise, the Jaguars are in for a long season.
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