Though his first two NFL preseason games, first overall pick Trevor Lawrence, now the Jaguars’ starting quarterback, was not helped by the efforts of offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell and passing game coordinator Brian Schottenheimer. Too often, Lawrence had to wait for slow-developing deep routes to break open while sitting behind a sub-par offensive line. It was a recipe for disaster, and Lawrence completed 20 of 32 passes for 184 yards and no touchdowns against the Browns and Saints. He was pressured on 14 of his 36 dropbacks, with three sacks.
That’s pretty much all you could expect when stuff like this was going on.
Trevor Lawrence's first NFL snap. Browns bring a linebacker blitz to his front side. This is what he sees downfield when he hits his back foot. pic.twitter.com/xyKYjxw4a2
— Doug Farrar (@NFL_DougFarrar) August 17, 2021
And when you have 30-yard crossers with a quick running back bailout, well… you’d like the rookie to have options over the middle.
Basically, unless Lawrence improvised outside of structure, Bad Things were going to happen. We saw this in Week 1 of the preseason on this deep completion to Marvin Jones was more about Lawrence getting out of the pocket, and Jones making some veteran moves against Browns rookie cornerback Greg Newsome.
Against the Saints in Week 2, one of Lawrence’s few positive plays came on a bootleg left in which he hit Laviska Shenault Jr. for 15 yards…
Trevor Lawrence across his body to Laviska Shenault Jr. 🎯
This connection will be special 🙌pic.twitter.com/0Y2WfGDzIF
— PFF Fantasy Football (@PFF_Fantasy) August 24, 2021
…but when it came to things in the pocket, more often than not, the combination of bland routes and iffy protection led to less-than-solid results.
RT @BenBrownPL: The Saints finally get to Trevor Lawrence for their first sack of the night pic.twitter.com/u5prKfZ3iA
— Kenny Hyttenhove (@KennyQBL) August 24, 2021
Fortunately for Lawrence, his coaches opened things up in the preseason finale against the Cowboys on Sunday, and Lawrence responded as one would hope. He completed 11 of 12 passes for 139 yards, two touchdowns, no interceptions, no sacks, and a quarterback rating of 154.5 — nearly twice the 78.1 passer rating he put up in his first two games. Whether it was Jacksonville’s coaches keeping things vanilla early on, or Jacksonville’s coaches realizing that they’d better give Lawrence more to work with, the results were entirely positive, and a good warmup for Lawrence in preparation for his first regular-season start against the Texans on Sunday, September 12.
How did his coaches make things better for Lawrence? The differences were obvious from the start.
