Looking back at some pregame predictions to see where it went wrong for the Los Angeles Chargers in Jacksonville against the Jaguars.
Yesterday's 35-6 win for the Jacksonville Jaguars over the Los Angeles Chargers wasn't fun to watch and I'm looking forward to putting it in the rearview mirror. But first, let's review this week's Strengths & Weaknesses.
Chargers Strength: Momentum
Well, the Chargers winning four of their previous fives games didn't mean a damn thing. Turns out, momentum isn't everything.
The Chargers head into a bye week now, which means a chance to wash the taste of this loss out of their mouth and start over with six games left to play.
Jaguars Strength: Turnovers
Wrong again, genius.
I was certain that the winner of this game would have less offensive turnovers than the other team. Turns out, each QB threw a (bad) interception and those were the only turnovers of the game.
I'm not going to say that the Jaguars' penchant for forcing turnovers and not giving the ball away wasn't a factor, it was, it just wasn't a main factor.
Here's why it mattered: The Chargers turned Trevor Lawrence's interception into three points. The Jaguars turned Justin Herbert's interception into seven points. But that probably had more to do with....
Chargers Weakness: Field Position
This one mattered. Let's look at the overall and then we'll dive in a little deeper.
Let's mark the 35 yard line of each team as the average starting point, just because that is where you get the ball if the kickoff is a touchback. Of their 9 drives, the Chargers started better than that field position on 2 of them. Of the Jaguars 10 drives, they started better than their own 35 yard line on 4 of them.
You'll also notice in the above graphic that none of the Chargers drives actually went further than 35 total yards. The Jaguars had six drives that went further than the longest Chargers drive of the day. That's how you win a field position battle.
Jaguars Weakness: The Passing Game
Alright, let's go back to what I had written for a second:
By "the passing game", I don't mean the Jacksonville Jaguars offense when it is throwing the ball. I mean the Jacksonville Jaguars have a very weak grip on the very idea of what a passing game is.
On offense, the Jaguars are 8th in pass attempts. That would make you think they're actually good at doing so! They're also, somehow, 19th in passing yards and 27th in passing touchdowns. That would make you think they're bad! They're also below-average at not throwing interceptions.
On defense, the Jaguars are.....
Rubbing temples like a frustrated parent
Look, they're terrible. They're 28th in passing yards allowed and 30th in passing touchdowns allowed. They're 23rd in new yards per attempt allowed.
Well well well, look who was (mostly) wrong again.
The Jaguars finished with a bulky (compared to the Chargers) line of 153 passing yards on 22 attempts. Trevor Lawrence threw 1 touchdown and 1 interception. That's not a modern day passing line, but Lawrence did look a lot better in the 2nd half than the 1st.
As for the aforementioned "terrible" Jaguars pass defense, it had something that I wasn't counting on: A very good pass rush. Actually, it's better than that. They figured out that they could blitz Justin Herbert while still holding the L.A. run defense in check, so there was no reason for their pass rushers to not pin their ears back and fly at Herbert on every single play.
Justin Herbert got hit 5 times, including 2 sacks, in just three quarters. One of those hits led to a concussion evaluation right before halftime. He also led the team in rushing, partly because of the incompetence of the running backs but mostly because of the incompetence of the offensive line, which wasn't able to protect him in the pocket or create holes for Kimani Vidal to run through.
If you want to be optimistic, the addition of Omarion Hampton (expected after the bye week) should force defense to respect the running attack a little more than they have been and that should be enough for Greg Roman to take advantage with play-action. But, against the Jaguars, the Chargers were only going to go as far as their backup offensive tackles could take them against a pretty solid defensive pass rush.