Despite a dominant 13-4 run, experts warn Jacksonville’s knack for creating turnovers and frequency of playing backup QBs may not be sustainable this season.
In their first season under head coach Liam Coen, the Jacksonville Jaguars exploded to a 13-4 record and won the AFC South division title.
This season, the Jaguars are determined to prove that they aren't just a one-year wonder. Coen has told his team that it will take more than one season of winning before they earn the respect of others in the NFL.
On paper, Jacksonville has a roster good enough to compete for its first-ever Super Bowl. Quarterback Trevor Lawrence is still only 26. After his MVP-finalist season, Lawrence is now viewed as one of the NFL's top franchise players.
The Jaguars also have one of the deepest and most talented wide receiver rooms in the league, as well as the NFL's reigning top defense against the run. Both the receiver group and the defense should get a boost from having a healthy Travis Hunter this season.
It looks like the Jaguars are set up for success for the foreseeable future.
However, ESPN's Bill Barnwell has included Jacksonville as one of the teams he expects to decline this season. Barnwell believes several factors that helped the Jaguars to their amazing 2025 season won't be sustainable this year.
What Factors Will Lead To The Jaguars' Decline?
Barnwell reminds his readers that he rightfully included Jacksonville on his list of teams expected to improve from 2024 to 2025. One of the factors he thought would help the team was the lack of turnovers the Jaguars forced in 2024, and he believed they would force significantly more in 2025.
That is exactly what happened. In fact, Jacksonville forced so many turnovers last year that Barnwell doubts they will be able to replicate this season, a complete 180 from last season's preview.
"The most obvious indicator for the Jags as improvement candidates heading into 2025 was their sheer lack of takeaways on defense. Jacksonville picked off only six passes and forced nine takeaways all season in 2024, with the latter figure ranking last in the NFL.
"In 2025, Anthony Campanile's unit matched that mark by the end of Week 3, creating three takeaways in each of Jacksonville's first three games. The Jags forced 14 turnovers through Week 5 and finished with 31 by the end of the campaign, second most in the league. Jacksonville ranked in the top five in both turnover margin (plus-13, third) and fumble recovery rate (63%, fourth). As I covered in the Bears section, both of those are difficult to sustain on a year-after-year basis. Devin Lloyd, who surprisingly tied for the team lead with five picks, also left in free agency after a career year."
Barnwell is right. Turnovers are as much luck as anything on the field. A team might recover 60% of fumbles one season and then 25% the next. Potential interceptions are dropped by the defense all the time. Sometimes a tipped ball falls harmlessly. Other times it pops high in the air and gets picked off. Counting on turnovers is risky. If the Jaguars have even a little worse luck when it comes to falling on loose balls this season, it could be a significant factor in their wins and losses.
Another factor Barnwell believes that Jacksonville benefited from last season, which isn't sustainable this year, is the quarterbacks they played against.
Or, should I say, the quarterbacks they didn't play against.
Barnwell mentions that in Jacksonville's first eight games, they faced the opposing team's "preferred" starting QB seven times. Over their last nine games, the Jaguars faced their opponent's starter only twice. Over the entire season, Jacksonville played against a backup QB on 41% of its defensive snaps.
"The Jags started against backups in Davis Mills, Jacoby Brissett, Brady Cook and Philip Rivers, then saw Daniel Jones and Ward suffer early-game injuries that forced them from those respective contests (often an even more difficult switch for a team to navigate). More than 66% of the passes thrown against the Jaguars during this eight-game stretch were by backups. And though players such as Justin Fields and Ward weren't necessarily playing all that well, they were still a cut above replacement-level quarterbacks such as Cook and Brandon Allen.
"Over the full season, nearly 41% of dropbacks against the Jaguars came from quarterbacks who weren't their team's primary signal-caller. Only the Rams and Buccaneers faced backup QBs more often. Unless the 2026 Jaguars turn into the 1985 Bears and start knocking quarterbacks out of games on a regular basis, it's tough to imagine Jacksonville will face backups quite as often this season."
It is extremely doubtful that the Jaguars will go up against that many backup QBs again in 2026.
Barnwell also points out that teams that make a drastic improvement from one season to the next, as Jacksonville did from 2024 to 2025, almost always balance out the following year and lose a couple more games than in the previous campaign.
Another variable that may cause the Jaguars to decline is the lack of real, actual home games this season. Jacksonville is scheduled for only eight home games against nine road games this year. However, two of those "home" games will be played in London.
Those are all very good reasons to believe that the Jaguars will not be able to reach 13 wins again this season.
Final Thoughts
The great thing about not being expected to win 13 games again is that the Jaguars don't need to win 13 games to have a successful season.
Even if they fall back to earth and "only" win, say, 10 games, it is still very likely that Jacksonville will be back in the playoffs,
The playoffs is where this team will be judged from now on. It was great they won 13 games a year ago, but the Jaguars lost at home in their first playoff game.
Jacksonville won't hesitate to trade a couple of regular-season wins for a couple of playoff wins this season.
