In a scene that has become all too familiar with the Jacksonville Jaguars, they suffered another crushing loss at home this time to the Los Angeles Chargers by the score of 45-10. The Jaguars were absolutely dominated from start to finish leading only once in the first quarter.
The Chargers came into the game having lost their last three, while the Jaguars the Jaguars were enduring some struggles of their own, suffering four consecutive games with a loss of 17 points or more.
Sunday’s loss dropped the Jaguars to 4-9 on the year with zero hopes of a playoff push and an eye towards building for next year.
While we wait on the offseason to graciously come, let’s breakdown the game versus the Chargers. Here are the good, the bad and the ugly moments from Sunday’s matchup against the Chargers:
The good: Another week, another broken franchise record
The season hasn’t gone the way that Jaguars fans had hoped but they are continuing to make their mark in the franchise’s record book.
Jaguars rookie quarterback Gardner Minshew II set the rookie passing touhsdown record with his 12-yard touchdown pass to tight end Nick O’Leary for his 15th touchdown on the season:
With only three games left in the season and a firm grip on the starting quarterback position, Minshew could easily extend that streak to 20 touchdowns. It appears as though he’ll be allowed to play out the season and could potentially catch fire down the stretch.
The bad: A plethora of penalties once again
Another week, another high accumulation if penalties from the Jaguars.
Sunday’s loss to the Chargers marked the third game where they finished the game with double-digit penalties as they accumulated 10 penalties for 101 yards.
The Jaguars have been absolutely sloppy with penalties as they currently are the most penalized team in the entire league committing 115 penalties for 1,015 yards.
The offensive line has been the biggest offender of penalties as they also lead the league in holding calls with 28 accepted holding penalties. To put that into perspective, the next closest team is the New York Jets with 22 offensive penalties.
The Jaguars have struggled mightily with penalties and that is one of many reasons why their record has not been favorable at 4-8.
Here is possibly the biggest reason why:
The ugly: Jaguars give up an egregious amount of huge plays
The biggest reason why the Jaguars struggled against the Chargers was due to the fact that they could not resist giving up huge chunk plays.
The Jaguars’ defense got absolutely decimated as they gave up seven plays to the Chargers that gained 20 yards or more. Three of the aforementioned plays went for touchdowns. One touchdown in particular came from Chargers tight end Hunter Henry being completely wide on a misread from Jaguars rookie linebacker Quincy Williams:
Chargers running back Austin Ekeler was the main culprit of those long plays as he was responsible for four of them in which he netted 164 total yards and a touchdown. Ekeler would finish with 101 yards rushing on just eight carries and also 112 yards receiving as he would completely victimize the Jaguars and sucked out any life that they may have had on the day.
The Chargers finished the game with 525 total yards at a 9.1 yard per play clip. There was absolutely no wrong that they could do on offense and it seemed like the Jaguars’ defense could do no right.
