On Wednesday, while explaining the team’s embarrassing 47-10 loss to the Bills on Monday Night Football, Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence said this: “We’ve been in a worse spot than this before.”
Have they, though?
Actually, they have. Two years ago, a loss to the then-hapless Broncos in London dropped the Jaguars to 2-6. They turned it around, making it all the way to the divisional round.
In December of that season, Lawrence said the loss to the Broncos “kind of flipped a switch in me.” Will Monday night’s loss flip that switch again?
His comments from December 2022 included something else that became relevant to his pre-draft comments about not having a chip on his shoulder.
“Honestly, I have a little bit more of a chip on my shoulder now just because of the last year and a half,” Lawrence said at the time. “I don’t really forget what’s been said and what people have written. Now, you see people change their mind after a couple weeks. I don’t use that necessarily as my only fuel, but I definitely use that.”
So the question becomes whether Lawrence can and will turn the clock back to the aftermath of the October 30, 2022 loss to the Broncos. Back to when the Jaguars started to climb out of a 2-6 hole. Finishing the year 9-8, winning the AFC South on the final Saturday night of the season, wiping out a 27-0 deficit in the wild-card game against the Chargers, and giving the Chiefs a real fight in making an exit from the round of eight.
It was all very relaxed during his Wednesday press conference. It felt like the Jaguars lost by seven points, not 37.
The questions were basic and perfunctory. There was no reference to his pre-draft comments about not having a chip on his shoulder, even though the on-the-fly reference to them on Tuesday’s PFT Live led to an item at PFT that was the most-read story of the day on Wednesday. There also was no reference to Lawrence finding a chip on his shoulder after the London loss to the Broncos, with that being the springboard for a question regarding whether he’ll find it again in the aftermath of losing so badly to the Bills.
It’s almost as if no one seemed to be particularly bothered by the loss, Lawrence included.
Maybe he is. Maybe he opts for a calm and easy demeanor when speaking to the media. Still, there’s no maybe about the stakes, come Sunday.
A Jaguars team that got its ass kicked in Buffalo on Monday will be facing a Texans team that got its ass kicked in Minneapolis on Sunday. The Texans are, on paper, the better team. The Texans are favored, by nearly a touchdown.
Owner Shad Khan made it clear before the season that he expects winning. Now. If that doesn’t start right now, the Jaguars will land in an 0-4 hole from which they might not be able to emerge.
If anyone is going to turn the Jaguars around, it’s the guy who got a new deal with a $55 million new-money average in the offseason. Sunday’s game could be, as a practical matter, an early litmus test as to whether the Jaguars should have waited a little while to do the deal.
