It cannot be overstated how much Lawrence’s vast improvement in the second half of the season directly led to a six-game jump in the Jaguars’ record from 3-14 last year under Urban Meyer. Here’s the Jaguars’ grades on the final report card and what each facet of the team can do better moving forward: Offense: B
Pederson’s team overcame a ton of adversity to produce incredible highlight moments, finishing with a 10-9 record that exceeded all preseason expectations. Looking back, all the downs and ups of 2022 made for an exhilarating ride. Then came the eye-popping excavation from a 27-0 hole against the Los Angeles Chargers in the AFC wild-card round, a feat that will live on in “Duuuval” for decades to come. This year’s recovery from a winless October (five consecutive losses by one score) featured remarkable comeback wins over the Las Vegas Raiders, Baltimore Ravens, Dallas Cowboys and Tennessee Titans twice to win the AFC South division. This doesn’t look to be an outlier like 2017, but is quite possibly the start of a long playoff run as Tom Coughlin’s teams delivered in the late 1990s. With the head coach-quarterback combo of Pederson and an ascending Trevor Lawrence, along with a locker room culture hailed as one of the NFL’s best, the future of the Jaguars has never looked brighter at any point in history.Īs Pederson said Monday about his team’s prospects moving forward - “the window of opportunity is now” - the Jaguars have a right to feel bullish about the future. No such concern exists with the current Jaguars. Sure enough, Bortles was gone just 13 months later and the team eventually crumbled from too much selfishness, quickly returning to irrelevancy. That’s because, five years ago, many still wondered if the winning formula could be sustained with a dominant defense and Blake Bortles as the quarterback. The ‘99 season ended with such a humongous thud - getting bludgeoned at home in the second half of the AFC Championship game by the hated Tennessee Titans, losing 33-14 - it wound up overshadowing an NFL-best record of 14-2.Įven the ‘17 postseason run, where the Myles-Jack-wasn't-down rants have yet to totally subside from that AFC Championship loss to the New England Patriots, lacked the same feel-good vibe of 2022 in its aftermath. They didn’t know true misery that came from years and years of losing. However, those Jaguars and their fan base had no scar tissue built up.
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