The Jacksonville Jaguars ended their season with a huge victory over the Indianapolis Colts by a score of 38-20 Sunday.
The Jaguars avenged an earlier loss from the Colts back in Week 12 where they were embarrassed by a score of 33-13. Sunday would provide a different story as the Jaguars would go on to set a season-high in points in their win against their division rivals.
Just as the season did, the Jags’ Week 17 game against the Colts had its share of ups and downs. Here’s a look at the good, the bad, and the ugly of the Jaguars’ season finale against the Indianapolis Colts:
The good: Ending the season on a high note
The Jaguars may not have had the season that everyone had hoped for, but at least they gave the fans something to be happy about Sunday — even if only for a week.
The Jags played nearly flawless football on both ends. On the offensive side, Jaguars quarterback Gardner Minshew II played well as he finished the game 27-of-39 with 295 passing yards and three touchdowns.
Although Jaguars wide receiver D.J. Chark Jr. had a modest game, he finished with his first 1,000 yard campaign of his career ending the season with 72 receptions and 1,008 receiving yards to go along with eight receiving touchdowns.
The Jaguars secondary played one of their better games of the season, limiting Colts quarterback Jacoby Brissett to a 48% completion percentage (12-of-25) for 162 yards and a 6.0 (out of 100) QBR. It was a complete improvement from their Week 12 matchup where Brissett finished with 15-of-24 passing yards with 148 yards and a touchdown.
The Jaguars played almost perfect ball on the defensive side except:
The bad: The Jaguars fail to stop the run…again
While the pass defense of the Jags played well, their rush defense left much to be desired.
Colts running back Marlon Mack ran at an efficient 5.1 yards per carry clip and finished with 77 yards and two touchdowns on the ground.
The Jaguars allowed a shockingly bad total of 396 rushing yards in their two meetings against the Colts. Mack finished with 109 rushing yards and a touchdown in the last matchup, and added two more rushing touchdowns Sunday.
The Jaguars struggled all year with defending the ground game as they came into Sunday’s game ranked No. 31 in the league against the rush, allowing a yard per carry average of 5.1, which is actually the highest total in the league. This can be contributed by the Jaguars having a staggering amount of injuries at the linebacker position resulting in a constant carousel of starters.
The ugly: A great game, at too late of a time
This was one of the best games the Jaguars have played, but it may have come too little too late.
While it’s nice to see that the Jaguars had some fight in them for the last game of the season, fans would’ve liked to see these kinds of performances earlier in the season and on a more frequent basis.
The Jaguars completely dominated a division rival in a week where head coach Doug Marrone’s job security appears to be on the line. There were reports that ownership was planning to let go of Marrone after Sunday’s game. With this kind of performance, owner Shad Khan might now think twice about the decision to keep Marrone and give him another year to assess his performance.
This could potentially bring an interesting dilemma. If the Jags stick with Marrone for next year and they can’t replicate this same fight that they showed against the Colts, they would possibly have to make a difficult in-season coaching change. In a nutshell, that would leave them in a position where they may regret not making the change this winter as the head coaching candidates for 2020 will be locked in with new teams.
The Jaguars have already made a significant change in their front office by cutting ties with former Executive Vice President Tom Coughlin amidst a string of player discrepancies. The question now remains: was Coughlin the true reason for the Jags disappointing season and will the team now improve moving forward with Doug Marrone? Or was this win against the Colts a short-term fluke with no clear indication of the team’s future success? Either way fans will be asking: “Where was this Jaguars team the whole year?”
