Gross Bombs: NFL Props for Week 16
Josh Gross
The 2023 race for the AFC No. 1 seed might be up there for one of the most competitive in recent memory. The four teams leading their divisions right now – the Baltimore Ravens, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Jacksonville Jaguars, and the Miami Dolphins – all currently sit at either 9-3 or 8-3. Headed into the home stretch of the season, the covered first-round bye looks like it could belong to any of these top four.
Super Bowl futures don’t reflect that same feeling of parity. The Chiefs, Ravens, and Dolphins have consensus odds inside +1000. The Jaguars, on the other hand, sit well behind at +1600.
Without digging into the numbers, this might pass the smell test for some. Not all three-loss records are built the same. You can make up some anecdotal explanations for why these three teams are obviously better suited than Jacksonville for a playoff run. Mahomes is Mahomes. Lamar Jackson is playing like an MVP right now, and Mike McDonald is putting on an offensive master class. How about that explosive Miami offense?
The further you look, though, the more disrespectful this whole thing is to Jacksonville. This team has earned the right to be in the Super Bowl conversation.
The stigma most likely starts with the division. Jacksonville came into the season looking like they were going to walk away with the AFC South. While their Week 12 slugfest win over the Houston Texans all but locked things up for Jacksonville, this was a hard-earned division title. Jacksonville has the third-hardest past schedule by DVOA behind only the Browns and Bengals.
The AFC South sneakily became one of the better divisions in all of football this season. Only two divisions have three teams with a positive total DVOA at the moment: the AFC North (Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland) and the AFC South (Jacksonville, Houston, and Indianapolis). The Texans have become one of the hottest teams in footbal amid C.J. Stroud’s meteoric rise, while the Colts have overcome the Anthony Richardson injury with great defensive play and creative offensive scheming by Shane Steichen.
Maybe most surprisingly, that No. 8 Jaguars DVOA rank is mostly being propped up by a top-five defense! Jacksonville currently leads the league with a -22.8% run defense DVOA. The front seven is top-five in adjusted line yards (fourth), RB yards per carry (fifth), stuffed rate (fourth), and second-level yards (third).
Jacksonville has seen incredible development out of its linebackers this season, especially in the run defense. Foyesade Oluokun has continued his dominance on the second level. His 117 tackles currently rank fourth among all linebackers, while his 26 total defeats lead all defensive players. According to PFF, Oluakun generates a run stop on 11.7% of his run play snaps, fifth among all linebackers with at least 150 run defense snaps. Not too far behind him is teammate Devin Lloyd, coming in with a 9.6% run stop rate.
On the defensive interior, Jacksonville has featured a deep rotating cast led by Roy Robertson-Harris and Folo Fatukasi. Fatukasi has been a brick wall on the interior, ranking ninth in run stop rate (11.8%) and tied for eighth in average depth of tackle (1.1 yards) among interior defensive linemen with at least 100 snaps. While not as effective a run-stopper, Robertson-Harris has already managed to set a career-high 30 total pressures this season, per Sports Info Solutions. Because of this interior defensive line, Jacksonville is able to run with just two down defensive linemen in nickel personnel. According to Arjun Menon’s The Scout, the Jaguars most frequently-run defensive personnel – nickel or otherwise – is a 2-4-5.
Speaking of the pass rush, Jacksonville has a quiet Defensive Player of the Year candidate brewing in Josh Allen. Through 11 games, Allen has already generated a career-high 12.0 sacks, third in the league behind Myles Garrett and T.J. Watt. His 59 total pressures are second only to Maxx Crosby, who has one game on him. Allen has also been one of the most efficient pass rushers in the league, ranking third-best in PFF’s pass rush productivity stat behind Garrett and Micah Parsons. On the other side of the line, while Travon Walker still leaves room for improvement, he has already surpassed his rookie sack total and matched his tackles for loss in four fewer games.
This secondary is showing massive signs of improvement over last year’s 29th-ranked pass defense. Darious Williams is second in the league in total pass breakups with 16. He currently shares the team lead for interceptions with Andre Cisco at three apiece. Rayshawn Jenkins is on pace to set a new career-high in pass breakups while also allowing a career-low 42.4% completion rate on 33 targets. Tyson Campbell is having a rough year marred by injury, but his absence has facilitated meaningful opportunities for second-year corner Montaric Brown.
In all, this secondary has become a stout group, allowing the ninth-lowest rate of explosive passes in the league. Their eighth-ranked defensive passing DVOA could arguably be even better. Jacksonville’s single-worst defensive passing outing of the season came against C.J. Stroud and the Texans in Week 3. In two matchups, the Jaguars went from allowing a 44.3% defensive passing DVOA to posting a more reasonable -3.5%.
All that praise heaped onto this Jacksonville defense has fallen on deaf ears. Holding the Chiefs to 17 points, handling the Buffalo Bills, sitting top-five in the league with 20 total takeaways – none of that makes headlines when Trevor Lawrence is on the Jaguars. The biggest move of the offseason was rostering Calvin Ridley during his reinstatement. Jacksonville drafted tackle Anton Harrison in the first round. This is an offensive-focused team. Why doesn’t it look like one?
There have been some reasons to be concerned about the offense. The Press Taylor offense hasn’t exactly been a roaring success. Last year, Jacksonville cracked the top-10 in offensive DVOA for the first time since 2007. To see the offense pick up a top-end wide receiver in Calvin Ridley and still fall to 16th the next year is frustrating. A lot of that frustration stems from the offensive line, though. Cam Robinson was suspended for the first four games of the year for violating the league’s performance-enhancing drug policy, and he just landed back on injured reserve this week. His backup, Walker Little, isn’t the pass blocker that Robinson is. The rookie Harrison, who was thrust into the starting role to replace Jawaan Taylor, has allowed 24 blown blocks (17 in pass protection) on a 3.5% blown block rate so far. On the interior, six different guards have gotten playing time on offense. Only Brandon Scherff has played more than 50% of offensive snaps.
That kind of offensive line instability has a massive ripple effect across the rest of the offense. Travis Etienne’s posting both a negative rushing DVOA and DYAR for the first time in his career. His success rate has fallen from 50.9% to 43.8% year-over-year, whilehis average yards per rushing attempt have fallen by 1.4. In the passing game, Lawrence currently averages just 2.49 seconds to throw, third-lowest in the league per Next Gen Stats. However, his ability to evade pressure and get the ball out quick still leaves the Jaguars with a solid 6.4% adjusted sack rate, ninth-best in football. That doesn’t tell the full story though. According to ESPN’s Mina Kimes, Lawrence was pressured on 43% of dropbacks on throws between 2.5 and 4.0 seconds, the highest rate of any quarterback in the NFL at the time of her post.
That brutal showing by the offensive line completely nullified the Jaguars’ passing attack at the start of the season. Taylor mostly called short-passing concepts just so Lawrence could get the ball off. As a result, Lawrence is averaging a career-low 7.3 aDOT. Ridley, Lawrence’s new deep threat, is averaging the third-lowest average depth of target in his career (second-lowest if you rule out his shortened 2021 season with noodle-armed Matt Ryan). Evan Engram’s 4.5 aDOT is at a career-low, nearly two full yards lower than his aDOT in Jacksonville last year. Etienne has already surpassed his rookie reception total in six fewer games, all while averaging a -0.7 aDOT (0.3 in 2022).
The good thing about this offense: it’s one that used to look good. That’s still in there somewhere. Head coach Doug Pederson knows that. On November 15, following the 49ers’ loss, Pederson was asked about the Jaguars’ offense ranking dead last in receiving route depth. Pederson, one of the most candid head coaches in the league when at the podium, kept it blunt. While he eventually went on to go into detail about how protection questions and timing factor into the stat, he started out by stating the obvious: “Honestly, we probably should be more conscious of taking more shots, quite frankly.
What happened next? The Jaguars did take more shots downfield. In their next two games, Lawrence posted aDOTs of 9.5 and 8.5, his two highest of the season. In turn, Jacksonville posted single-week offensive passing DVOAs of 60.9% and 39.0%, their best and fourth best marks of the season.
Is the problem completely resolved? Absolutely not. Jacksonville was able to handle two decent front sevens after getting embarrassed by San Francisco’s defensive line. The Jaguars now have the pleasure of running through most of the AFC North. If anything was going to test whether Jacksonville can handle a pass rush, it’s heading to Cleveland on a short week. If they pass that, they get the honor of hosting Baltimore in primetime for what is likely the right to the top seed in the AFC.
Frankly, the next few weeks are about more than just a playoff bye. For Jacksonville, their pride has got to be on the line. The Jaguars were good enough to lead the third-largest comeback in playoff history last year. They completely reinvented themselves defensively. They are currently overcoming a turnstile of an offensive line, all while facing one of the hardest schedules in the league. None of that has earned the Jacksonville Jaguars an ounce of respect in the public discourse. If there was ever a time for Jacksonville to prove it is a contender, it’s right now.
