Jaguars’ season-ending loss to Titans was final straw, but upset was weeks in the making

Ben Arthur

AFC South Reporter

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The Jaguars’ beatdown last week of the woeful Panthers, the NFL’s worst team, served as a reprieve. 

That didn’t take away from their implosion. How they lost four straight games in December, when a contender is expected to play its best football. How they unraveled from a hopeful for the AFC’s No. 1 seed at 8-3 — a relatively simple path to the playoffs — to a team just hoping it could hang on for its division. How their own stumbles created a must-win regular-season finale. 

All that has come to bite the Jaguars — with the same errors and miscues and lapses that put them in that predicament in the first place. 

“Today’s game was sort of our season in a nutshell,” coach Doug Pederson said. 

The Jaguars were stunned Sunday, falling 28-20 to the Titans to be eliminated from playoff contention, capping the biggest collapse for a team this season. Their 2023 campaign ends as losers in five of their last six games. With the Steelers beating the Ravens on Saturday, the Jags had no path to the postseason without beating Tennessee and clinching a division title. 

Those same issues for the Jaguars on Sunday? Start with the turnovers at the wrong place and time. 

Like in the third quarter, a drop by tight end Evan Engram was picked off by Terrell Edmunds, giving the Titans the ball at the Jacksonville 36 (Tennessee scored a touchdown seven plays later). 

Like the end of the first half, when the Jaguars were in plus territory and had a chance to cut their deficit to four points, quarterback Trevor Lawrence threw too high for wide receiver Zay Jones and he was again picked off, this time by cornerback Sean Murphy-Bunting. 

We saw the issues of the Jaguars’ takeaway-dependent defense exposed, too. We saw the sloppy tackling that defined the second half of the season. 

Derrick Henry, playing in what was quite possibly his last game as a Titan, bit them for it. He…

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Publish date : 2024-01-07 23:52:37

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