The Jacksonville Jaguars are dealing with an early case of the injury bug just two weeks into the 2019 season.
Three of the Jaguars starters have been ruled out entirely by Jaguars head coach Doug Marrone for Sunday’s matchup against the Houston Texans. The Jaguars have 10 players in total on the team’s official injury report, with six of them being starters on defense and two being starters on offense.
Here are some of the players that will most likely get the starting nod for Sunday’s game against the Texans:
Wide receiver DJ Chark
The football world has already drawn their eyes to this speedy receiver out of Louisiana State University.
DJ Chark will take over again at the second wideout position just as he did last week. Chark will be taking the place of wide receiver Marqise Lee, who surfaced on the injury report with a knee injury.
Chark displayed great chemistry with both quarterbacks Nick Foles and Gardner Minshew and will look to keep the same momentum going against the Texans. During Week 1’s game against the Kansas City Chiefs, he caught a career-high of four reception for 146 yards and a touchdown and will look to repeat his breakout performance.
Defensive end/linebacker Josh Allen
Josh Allen, the stud linebacker out of Kentucky, will look to take over for star defensive end Yannick Ngakoue who is ruled OUT this week due to a hamstring injury. It will mark the young pass-rusher’s first missed game of his entire four-year career.
Allen, who was the seventh overall pick in April’s draft, had a dominant preseason and was around the quarterback quite a bit last week as well, despite only registering two tackles.
The tricky part for Allen may be taking significant snaps with his hand in the dirt, which is something Ngakoue has proven he can do. While the rookie has proven he can occasionally do it, too, most of his snaps seemingly have come out of two-point stance, so it may take some time to adjust if he’s predominantly playing from three-point stance against Houston. Then again, he’s proven to catch on quickly so he could be fine in the end.
Cornerback Tre Herndon
One of the lesser-profile players on the list, cornerback Tre Herndon, will be starting for Pro Bowl cornerback A.J. Bouye.
Herndon, a second-year player out of Vanderbilt, is virtually unproven as a starting corner, registering only 13 tackles and no interceptions last season. He also didn’t register any stats last week, so Week 2 will mark a drastic change for him.
Herndon is a physical corner who is not afraid to throw a heavy shot. Unfortunately, he gets caught out of position occasionally and is better in zone coverage because he is too overly reliant on those big tackles. That said, he’ll need to bring his A-game as Sunday will mark the first start of his career.
Offensive tackle Will Richardson
Left tackle Cam Robinson was cleared to play this week, however, Marrone elected to hold him out because he’s missed a significant amount of time dating back to the preseason. Playing in his place will be second-year offensive lineman Will Richardson, who started in his place last week against the Chiefs, too.
Week 1 marked Richardson’s first start in the NFL. It also marked his first career start at left tackle, which even dates back to his high school and collegiate career. Earlier in the week, Marrone told the media that Richardson basically held his own and the staff had no problem starting him again in Robinson’s place. Unfortunately, he’ll have to do so against the likes of J.J. Watt and Whitney Mercilus, who may be even tougher opponents to battle than Frank Clark was Week 1.
Safeties Cody Davis and Andrew Wingard
The Jaguars added safety Ronnie Harrison to the injury report Saturday as questionable with an ankle injury, and while he still could play, we’ll cover his situation anyway.
Behind Harrison on the depth chart is special teams captain Cody Davis, who has five starts to his name (all with the Los Angeles Rams), played in 92 total games and accumulated 69 total tackles and two picks. The Jags also have 2019 undrafted free agent Andrew Wingard, who had a strong showing in training camp.
With how this weekend is trending, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Harrison held out. If he can’t go, that would put the Jags on the field minus two starting members of the secondary, which is a bad predicament to be in against a hot receivers corps like the Texans’.
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