It has been a painful week for the Jacksonville Jaguars, as they are coming off their most disappointing loss of the season thus far, even after a 51-17 drubbing against the New England Patriots, in a chance to take the sole lead of the AFC South, but faltered in a 16-13 loss in overtime against the Indianapolis Colts. However, now they need to regroup and focus in on their second in-state rivalry match-up of the season against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
For the Jaguars, there was certain disappointment from the side after leaving Indianapolis empty-handed. After gaining over 400 yards of offense, they only managed to score 13 points and had only 3 points off of 2 turnovers last week. The main key for the Jags going into Tampa Bay is to finish off drives in the end zone, where the Jags have only scored touchdowns in 36% of the times they have been in the red zone (4 on 11 attempts) in the first quarter of the season.
Another major inconsistency for the upcoming game for the Jaguars has to be scoring points, especially in the second half. To put this in perspective, the Jaguars have scored 45 points in the first half in the first quarter of the season, but only scored 17 points in the second half, with 14 of those points coming from garbage time play against New England. The entire offense knows this, especially quarterback Blake Bortles.
"The one more improvement would be to win, obviously," Blake Bortles said. "We've done everything. All our numbers are pretty good with the exception of offensive scoring, which [is] the bottom-line. It's the only one that matters, right?"
If the season were to go on pace for statistics, Blake Bortles would finish with over 4,000 passing yards and his top two receiving targets, Allen Hurns and Allen Robinson, would both end the season with over 1,200 receiving yards. Both Hurns and Robinson are currently the two best wide receivers thus far in receiving yards among second-year players in the league. However, a 15.5 points per game stat-line will not win you games in the NFL if you are just inflating the stat sheet and execution needs to come into play against the Buccaneers.
The Buccaneers have similarities to the Jaguars when it comes to having a young, rookie quarterback in Jameis Winston. Last week's performance was the toughest of his early NFL career throwing four interceptions in a 37-23 losing effort against the Carolina Panthers. However, the rookie quarterback is showing early season struggles with early season success, just like Bortles had a year ago, as he already has six touchdowns in four games. The tools are certainly around Jameis Winston, with running back Doug Martin doing a valiant effort in the run game so far, and two top tier wide receivers in Vincent Jackson and Mike Evans, who are both match-up nightmares with their major height advantage.
Both teams have similar themes going into week five's game in Tampa. They both have made mistakes in their first four games in the season that have cost them some matches early on in the season; however, this should be the game that one team can leap frog the other with confidence going into the rest of the season. The Jaguars have failed to execute games in the second half and the Buccaneers have turned the ball over to the opposition 10 times this season, second highest in the league coming into this game. Another stat had the Jaguars lose 11 consecutive road games in a row with the Buccaneers losing 11 consecutive home games. This Sunday, something has to give, and maybe it could have one team's season saved for another day in hopes for something more later on in the year.