The Jaguars offense is actually worse than you think

[BobDigital]

I am not trying to look past an opponent but I wanted to get an honest view of the kind of offense the Patriots would be up against. Clearly this will be a pretty tough defense for the Patriots to face even if you think their numbers are inflated. So if the offense has trouble the question is how likely is the defense to keep them down to a low enough number to win. I thought it was pretty likely before looking at the Jaguars all that close. Now that I have looked closely I realized I was wrong. This offense is very likely not to be just contained below a certain threshold but COMPLETELY shut down if not given help by bad defense, too many untimely penalties or defensive points/turnovers in short fields.

That sounds like a very disrespectful thing to say about an offense that ranked 5th in PPG at 26.1 and 6th in YPG at 365 YPA and just put up 45 points on the Steelers. Oddly enough though it's actually true.

Here are the numbers. I went game by game and looked at all their scoring drives. Every point they scored. I took out defensive/ST scores, scores caused by short fields and scores caused by huge offensive plays (mostly runs but some passes too) of 40 yards or more. I didn't worry about the beneficial penalties they got. All offenses get those and I am not going to be concerned with how stupid their opponents were.. I am aware all offenses benefit from defensive scores and short fields to a degree but I can't compare every single offense and it is clear the Jaguars benefited a tremendous amount from these. To make up for this I gave them credit for every PAT they missed to add some points they should have gotten. Here is the game by game.

1) Texans - scored 30 and 16 were legit
2) Titans - scored 16 and should've had 17 missed PAT. 14 were with 10 minutes left down 27 though
3) Ravens - scored 44 and 23 were legit - one of their best offensive days.
4) Jets - scored 20 and 10 were legit.
5) Steelers - scored 30 and 9 were legit
6) Rams - scored 17 and 10 were legit.
7) Colts - scored 27 and 20 were legit
8) Bengals - scored 23 and 16 were legit
9) Chargers - scored 20 and 10 were legit
10) Browns -scored 20 and 6 were legit
11) Cards - scored 24 and 10 were legit
12) Colts - scored 30 and 30 were legit (best offensive game of the year for them)
13) Seahawks - scored 30 and 9-16 were legit (I was torn on how to grade this one)
14) Texans - scored 45 and and 21 were legit
15) 49ers - scored 33 and 31 for legit (though 14 of those happened really late against prevent and 1 on a short field due to a successful onside kick. You could argue they did worse)
16) Titans - scored 10 points and and 3 were legit.
p1) Bills - scored 10 point and 10 were legit. Maybe 3 not though... Kinda a short FG drive.
p2) Steelers - 45 points scored and 28 were legit.. Then again you could argue they scored on Pitt early before they realized they had to actually play a football game and the 2 late scores were aided by a tossed up prayer pass for 40-something and a 40 yard short pass that should have only gone for 5 yards or nothing if played better.

Anyway the if you run all the "legit" points you get between 15.5-14.33 PPG offensively. Keep in mind some of those points were against teams that have arguably already given up on the year and some were very late vs prevent. Perhaps you might think their offense preformed poorly cause they faced a hard defensive schedule. Actually it is the opposite. In opposing defensive PPG they faced the 4th easiest schedule in the NFL. They continually faced some of the easiest defenses the NFL had to offer.

The point is this. If the Patriots offense and STs doesn't help the Jags O and the D doesn't give up cheap easy chunk plays (A staple of this D) it is very possible to argue the Jags might be hard pressed to get to double digits.

 

[primetime]

What does the Patriots offense look like if you run this exercise

 

[bormio]

Non-legit points count the same as legit ones.

 

[Kontradiction]

Oh they've been downright terrible throughout long stretches of this season. It's purely related to Bortles. Bortles has been Jekyl and Hyde all season. He was Jekyl from Week 16 through the Wild Card round before suddenly turning into Mr. Hyde in Pittsburgh. NFLN showed a checkdown he made where he went through three different progressions. That's not something that Bortles does when he's in "trash mode".

 

[BobDigital]

What does the Patriots offense look like if you run this exercise

I don't know. It took me a hour to do it. I would say probably pretty good as the defense didn't score many points or get many turnovers for us nor did the offense get too many short fields. Also the Patriots only ran over 40 yards once all year (Lewis got 44).

I would guess the Patriots go down 1-4 PPG but the offense didn't get a lot of help this year from the other units as far as short fields or free points.

 

[BobDigital]

Non-legit points count the same as legit ones.

I had to use some term to differentiate. I don't mean they don't count. I mean they are based on points the D scored, made easy to score or based on mistakes by the opposing defenses (like a 75 yard run for a TD. That is just bad D and won't happen vs the Patriots or most defenses)

 

[jah]

What does the Patriots offense look like if you run this exercise

I'd be interested to see this exercise done on the offenses we faced each week (to evaluate how often this defense allows "illegitimate points"). Because OP's point only helps the Patriots if they allow less of those "fluke scores" than other teams.

 

[BobDigital]

I'd be interested to see this exercise done on the offenses we faced each week (to evaluate how often this defense allows "illegitimate points"). Because OP's point only helps the Patriots if they allow less of those "fluke scores" than other teams.

If i did that i would need to do this for all 31 other teams though. I'll so a quick one on the Patriot just to run the numbers cause people seem to want it but I won't look AS closely cause like I said this is time consuming.

 

[primetime]

A competing hypothesis is that the Jaguars are in fact very good at scoring points on defense, off long plays, on short drives, and so on, given that they've scored a consistently large number of points in such a manner over the course of the season. What's more notable is that they're capable of winning games even when they don't (see Buffalo in the Wild Card round). As someone noted above, points are points.

 

[bormio]

I had to use some term to differentiate. I don't mean they don't count. I mean they are based on points the D scored, made easy to score or based on mistakes by the opposing defenses (like a 75 yard run for a TD. That is just bad D and won't happen vs the Patriots or most defenses)

I understand your point, but mine is that Jacksonville is good at creating non-legit points. We do not want to become another of a long list of teams beat this year by their crappy offense and fake points. Ball security is always a priority, especially this week.
BTW, I remember Melvin Gordon going for 89 yards and those Chiefs TDs week one. It can happen.

 

[Bill Lee]

Oh they've been downright terrible throughout long stretches of this season. It's purely related to Bortles. Bortles has been Jekyl and Hyde all season. He was Jekyl from Week 16 through the Wild Card round before suddenly turning into Mr. Hyde in Pittsburgh. NFLN showed a checkdown he made where he went through three different progressions. That's not something that Bortles does when he's in "trash mode".

So it'll be BB's job to turn him back to Jekyl again. Unfortunately we've had a few cases in the past where a few "idiot savant" QBs have had strong games against us. I'm not very worried about Bortles. Hopefully for him his next gig is drowning his sorrows on Bortles and James.

 

[Kontradiction]

So it'll be BB's job to turn him back to Jekyl again. Unfortunately we've had a few cases in the past where a few "idiot savant" QBs have had strong games against us. I'm not very worried about Bortles. Hopefully for him his next gig is drowning his sorrows on Bortles and James.

The Patriots match up well against their offense if Fournette isn’t healthy. Most of their production in the passing game goes through their wideouts and the Pats have the corners to cover them. The only area where they’d be able to really expose the defense is on sweeps and the crack toss and Fournette is banged up. That’s also a pretty big reason why the team went out and got Harrison.

 

[jah]

If i did that i would need to do this for all 31 other teams though. I'll so a quick one on the Patriot just to run the numbers cause people seem to want it but I won't look AS closely cause like I said this is time consuming.

I'm not asking you or anyone to actually do it but you wouldn't have to do all 31 teams. Just all 17 games we've played.

 

[BobDigital]

Patriots with the same formula but I almost want to keep long pass play drives as you kind of expect it out of Brady... still i'll take them off but they are iffy to take off in this case IMO.

1 KC - scored 27 and 27 were legit.
2) Saints - scored 36 and and 30* were legit (a 53 yard pass to Gronk and missed PAT added)
3) Texans - scored 36 and 29 were legit (given a short field by the D)
4) Panthers - scored 30 points and 30 were legit.
5) Tampa - scored 19 and 13 were legit (A FG due to a blocked punt and 1 FG due to an onside kick fail)
6) Jets - scored 24 points and 24 were legit
7) Falcons - scored 23 points and 23 were legit
8) Chargers - scored 21 point and 19 were legit (safety)
9) Broncos - scored 41 points and 24 were legit (STs punt return TD and an short field TD plus a cheap FG due to a blocked punt)
10) Raiders - scored 33 points and 23 were legit (64 yard pass to cooks and turnover on downs gave us an easy FG)
11) Miami - scored 35 and 28 were legit (a short field late due to a stop of downs)
12) Bills - scored 23 and 23 were legit
13) Miami - scored 20 and 20 were legit
14) Steelers - scored 27 and 27 were legit.
15) Bills - scored 37 and 37 were legit
16) Jets - scored 26 and 24 were legit (safety late)
p1) Titans - scored 35 and 35 were legit (you could argued it should be 28 cause they only had to go 48 yards for a TD but i gave the Jags credit for drives that long.

This gives the Patriots 436 legit points or 25.65 PPG. You could argue you should count the long TD passes for Brady BTW... in that case it be 26.47. Either way it's 3-2.1 points below their 28.6PPG.

The Jags are over 10 points lower than their marked PPGs.

 

[RobertWeathers]

The Patriots match up well against their offense if Fournette isn’t healthy. Most of their production in the passing game goes through their wideouts and the Pats have the corners to cover them. The only area where they’d be able to really expose the defense is on sweeps and the crack toss and Fournette is banged up. That’s also a pretty big reason why the team went out and got Harrison.

And I would suspect with KVN back and Flowers's speed that makes the matchup even better.

My biggest fear with JAX is the stupid ass chunk plays NE has given up now and then in the passing game and that will in key moments in the game totally flip field position and get JAX a couple of short yardage BS scores.

 

[BobDigital]

I'd be interested to see this exercise done on the offenses we faced each week (to evaluate how often this defense allows "illegitimate points"). Because OP's point only helps the Patriots if they allow less of those "fluke scores" than other teams.

Well the Pats had only 12 turnovers all year and 4 of those came on picks where i thought Brady clearly had his foot bothering him. I would argue the Pats seem very unlikely to have many turnovers. As for chunk plays of 40-50 yards since the last 8 weeks not many stick out in my mind at least.

 

[maineman209]

If you apply the same methodology to the 2009 WC loss to the Ravens, the Pats' defense in that game doesn't look nearly as horrible as most people assume it was.

 

[bormio]

Not sure why chunk plays are considered non-legit for an offense - some teams have real playmakers that can go the distance - like Fournette. You have to respect that and account for it in your game plan.

 

[Angelpats]

This is a great thread. It’s a reverse jinx thread. I now expect us to have a couple of defensive scores and short fields and get a bunch of fake points. Not joking. Usually one thread here says one thing and the opposite happens in the game and I hope this one is it.

 

[tasmlab]

If Jags get two turnovers, how their offense was 'supposed' to perform goes out the window.

(I like typing the obvious on the internet)