JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — When you hear coaches and players talking about making things easy for both the quarterback, you’ll often hear motion, play-action, and screens come up in conversation. All three have their distinct advantages to creating opportunities for offenses to thrive.
Unfortunately, these easy buttons have been anything but for the Jaguars this season. The Jaguars find themselves dead last at completing both play-action passes and screens.
On the season, Trevor Lawrence is completing just 50% of his play-action passes. While the 415 yards off play-action are more or less about league average, the yards per attempt rank just 28th among the top-38 quarterbacks, according to Pro Football Focus.
It isn’t just a Trevor Lawrence issue either, five drops tie for second most in the NFL, in addition to five throw aways and four batted balls. Nevertheless, something supposed to help the offense has done very little for the Jaguars thus far.
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When Liam coen signed to Jacksonville, screens were a large part of the conversation as his work in Tampa Bay was among the finest screen work in the NFL. The screens are certainly there as the Jaguars run them at the third-highest clip in the NFL (15.2%), however, they are completing just 73.8% of their attempts, 32nd in the NFL.
Similarly to play-action, it’s a group effort, but it’s certainly a decline from the 90.3% completion that Trevor Lawrence saw last season. When the screen is completed, not much is being done with it either. Lawrence’s 3.9 yards per attempt on screens ranks 29th among the top-37 quarterbacks.
It’s certainly something to monitor going forward as Coen’s likeness for screens likely isn’t going anywhere.
Among other things that should be much easier than they happen to be for Jacksonville is down and distance on first down. Typically, a team should average 10.00 yards or fewer on average every first down. In fact, 19 teams have managed this feat this season.
The Jaguars, though, rank 31st before the ball is even snapped every new set of downs, averaging 10.23 yards to go every first down. Penalties have consistently put the Jaguars behind the eight ball and it’s led the team away from running the ball early in games, as have the sacks.
Each of the last two games have started with a sack on the first play of the game, further forcing Coen’s hand as a play-caller. The last few weeks, sacks have also been a huge factor in creating daunting down and distances particularly on third down, where the Jaguars’ 7.83 average yards to go ranks 30th in the NFL.
There’s still a lot to like about this Jaguars football team, but they must get back to their identity, running the football and creating takeaways on defense. Neither are something the team has managed as of late. The toughest slate is now over, however, and the Las Vegas Raiders lead the NFL in turnovers per drive. It might just be the get-right game for Jacksonville.
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