Jaguars look to be more consistent week-to-week

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — So which Jacksonville Jaguars team will show up in Pittsburgh this Sunday — the team that played like a playoff contender in Weeks 1 and 3 or the team that played like Jaguars teams of recent years that showed up in Weeks 2 and 4?

If the Jaguars continue on their roller-coaster ride, it’s time for another good showing. Jacksonville continues a pattern of doing the complete opposite of what head coach Doug Marrone has continually harped on from the day training camp opened, that of playing well consistently.

And as has been the case for over a year now, the Jaguars seem to play well as a team when quarterback Blake Bortles plays well. Last year, the problem was that Bortles was mostly subpar or just average. When he was on his game, the Jaguars generally posted a win. That’s been the case this year in that he played well against both Houston and Baltimore, but not as well in the Tennessee and New York Jets games. But Marrone isn’t ready to lay the brunt of the blame on Bortles for the losses this year.

“He’s not the only one that that happens to,” Marrone noted. “Sometimes the line can go up and start getting on a roll and you start controlling the line of scrimmage real well. You feel good, you feel comfortable about what you’re doing there. The backs are on course, they’re not trying to make something crazy happen. If they see three, they’re taking three and things of that nature. Receivers, running the routes, not trying to do something different. It’s not a point just to get open. Some things are timing-wise. There are a lot of things that go into the players. What you have to do is come out there — and that’s why we practice a lot — to make sure what we see is going to be consistent enough to put it over into the game on Sunday.”

Marrone came under some heat over the number of carries for running back Leonard Fournette in Sunday’s game. The No. 4 overall pick in last spring’s college draft was in the lineup for 39 of the Jaguars’ 78 plays against the Jets. He finished with 24 carries (for 86 yards), caught four passes (for 59 yards) and was the target on another pass. That means there were only 10 plays that Fournette was not designed to get the ball while he was on the field. Some felt that wasn’t enough. When the Jaguars marched to the 6-yard line with less than two minutes left in the game, they had a first-and-goal. But Fournette was on the sideline for the next three plays when the Jaguars missed on two pass attempts and gained just two yards on a short pass. The belief was that Fournette should have had at least one, if not more, running attempts in that sequence.

“It’s really a difficult thing,” Marrone explained about why Fournette was not on the field for the crucial series. “It’s easy afterward, ‘Oh, I wish we had him in this situation or I wish I had Chris (Ivory) or I wish we had Corey (Grant).’ We try to go in there and we know that we’re going to put those guys in there. We have a feel what the workload is from them. Sometimes it increases depending on how the game goes. I think it’s tough. That’s one thing, it’s like all of the other positions. We’re always trying to constantly maintain how to manage the substitution level to make sure that the best players are in there. That’s always difficult because it’s not like you could have a set plan and then all of a sudden that plan starts to change. I think it’s tough because if we don’t play him enough early on, then all of a sudden you’re behind and now you’re playing here. But now you’re not running. There’s a lot of things that go into it. It’s not an exact science, but it’s one that we continue to keep working on.”

Many people felt the Jaguars would be 2-2 at the quarter turn of the 2017 schedule. The strange thing is that most would have predicted the Jaguars to have beaten Tennessee and the Jets and lose to Houston and Baltimore, just the opposite of what the team did. It’s an indication that Jacksonville is going to be an unpredictable team the rest of the way, unless the consistency factor kicks in.

It will need to happen quickly. Pittsburgh is 3-1 with only an overtime loss in Chicago keeping the Steelers from joining Kansas City as teams with an unblemished record. The Jaguars and Steelers both like to run the ball. They both have a quarterback that hasn’t played up to his potential on a consistent basis in recent games and both like to play tough, physical defense. Marrone believes the Jaguars are better than what they were in opening up the 2017 season in Houston.

“I think no doubt about it. I don’t think it ever changes. You’re always trying to make sure of how we play, this is what we want to do. This is the type of game that we want. This is what we have to do a better job of. This is what cannot happen to us with the way we play. This is what we need to take advantage of when we do have these opportunities. We have to make them work. That is a constant education of the players knowing exactly what we want to do.”

SERIES HISTORY: 23rd regular-season meeting. Series tied, 11-11. Series has seen three straight three-game streaks. Pittsburgh has won the last three, Jaguars won three previous games, Steelers won three in a row before that. The teams have played just twice in the last eight years, with the Steelers wining 17-9 in Jacksonville in 2014 and at home in 2011 by a 17-13 margin. The last eight games, dating back to 2002, have all been decided by less than 10 points. The only playoff game between the teams came in 2009, with the Steelers winning a 31-29 wild-card game.

–A bad call on a penalty and a missed penalty call that led to a penalty were pivotal. Take either one away and the Jaguars might have been victorious last Sunday against the Jets. After watching the game tape, Jaguars wide receiver Arrelious Benn and linebacker Paul Posluszny both regret that they made crucial penalties late in the game that helped the Jets to a win.

Benn’s infraction was a holding call at the 6-yard line, seconds before teammate Leonard Fournette ran past him into the end zone for what would have given the Jaguars a 23-20 lead with just over a minute left in the game. But Benn’s holding call on the Jets’ Morris Claiborne negated the score and the Jaguars eventually had to settle for a game-tying field goal.

Benn watched, rewatched and watched several more times the play in which he was cited for holding. Each time, he felt the same — bad call.

“Yeah, pretty much,” he stated about it being a bad call. “I guess the ref saw something. That’s his job to make those types of calls. I just have to block the guy. It’s football, you versus the other man and you have to win the battle. I guess I didn’t win it like I thought I did.”

Posluszny was whistled for an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty late in the overtime session. The Jaguars linebacker was blocked in the back on a Jets punt return causing him and Jets blocker Dylan Donahue to end up out of bounds by the Jets bench. Posluszny jumped to his feet and stood over Donahue, yelling at him for what he thought was an illegal block that was not called by any of the officials.

A day later and after watching the play unfold, Posluszny still felt that it was a penalty that should have been called, but he regretted his actions that resulted in the Jets getting possession at the Jaguars 25-yard line after the 15-yard march-off.

“In the end, I’m wrong,” he said. “Everything I do, I do to try and protect the team and help this team win. And in the most crucial time, I failed at that. That’s why I look at that and say, ‘I hurt the team and that’s all that matters.'”

–The Jaguars can’t use injuries as a reason they don’t have a winning record after four games. The team has lost just one starter to injury through the first four games although it was a significant loss. Wide receiver Allen Robinson, the team’s top pass receiver, went out in the season opener against Houston with a torn ACL and is out for the year. Allen Hurns replaced Robinson in the lineup, and other than one game where the Jaguars started with an extra wide receiver instead of fullback Tommy Bohanon, the Jaguars have used the same starting lineup each week.

The defense has remained intact through the first quarter of the season. The same 11 players have started all four games thus far.

–The Jaguars have struggled all season in trying to convert their third-down opportunities. Only once in four games has Jacksonville been able to make good on 30 percent of its third-down tries. Surprisingly, it came in their worst showing of the season, the 37-16 shellacking that Tennessee laid on them. In that game, the Jaguars converted six of their 13 third-down opportunities. The other three games have been dreadful — a pair of 3-for-12 games and last week’s 4-of-15. For the season, Jacksonville is 16-for-52, a paltry 30.7 percent. Only three other NFL teams have a lower percentage than the Jaguars after the first four weeks. The Jaguars actually do better when the distance is 7-10 yards to get a first down compared to 1-6 yards.

“The irony of it is third-and-7-to-10 (yards), we are above league average at 44 percent, which is really, really good,” Jaguars head coach Doug Marrone said. “The 1-to-6 (yards), specifically 1-to-2 (yards) we are at half the league average. We are at 30 percent, normally where the league is 60 percent. That is the thing that really gets you because you fight so hard to put yourself in good down and distances. Then you put yourself in those situations, so you have a better ability — it opens up more of the playbook to things of that nature of what to do. We haven’t converted on that. That is where I think the issues (stem from) and that is one of the things we have been focusing on this week.”

Three times, the Jaguars went for it on fourth down and each time they were able to convert.

NOTES: WR Marqise Lee did not practice on Wednesday due to a rib injury from Sunday’s game. …C Brandon Linder missed Wednesday’s practice due to illness. … G A.J. Cann was limited in practice on Wednesday due to the hand injury he suffered in Sunday’s game against the Jets. …RB Leonard Fournette saw limited action on Wednesday after suffering an ankle injury late in the game against the Jets. …DT Malik Jackson played 64 of 70 snaps against the Jets. He was limited in Wednesday’s practice due to a groin injury. …DE Calais Campbell continues to play well for the Jaguars. He also played all but six snaps against the Jets and finished with six tackles and another sack. He now has 5.5 sacks in four. …DE Yannick Ngakoue had two more sacks to raise his year’s total to four, good for a tie for third among AFC defenders. … QB Blake Bortles was just 1 of 8 for 15 yards in pass attempts that traveled at least 15 yards in the air. Bortles would have had two more incompletions but the plays was nullified due to a penalty. … K Jason Myers has had 20 of his 24 kickoffs go into the end zone for a touchback, his 83.3 percentage ranking second best in the NFL. … P Brad Nortman ranks sixth in the NFL with a 47.2 gross punting average. A year ago, Nortman finished with a 46.6 average, third best in franchise history.