After a brutally embarrassing loss to the Chargers, it’s not surprising to see the Jaguars plummet down power rankings.
The world appeared to be upside-down last week after the Jacksonville Jaguars almost upended the Green Bay Packers in week 1, but we’re back in a familiar place after week 2. As we’ve seen for the last 3 years now, the Jaguars just have no answer for Philip Rivers and the San Diego Chargers.
The Jaguars built some goodwill with the national media after taking the Packers down to the wire, but they lost all of it and then some after being taken to the woodshed by Rivers. At this point, it’s going to take a lot more than moral victories to gain back the respect of analysts and fans.
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Here’s a brief collection of some rankings around the web as the Jaguars look to bounce back in week 3:
The Jaguars are one of the toughest teams to gauge right now. They looked great against the Packers but were completely dominated by the Keenan Allen-less Chargers one week later. Quarterback Blake Bortles still has plenty of room to grow and has to be more consistent with his accuracy, otherwise the Jags won’t win.
Have the Jags’ players gotten off the plane in San Diego yet? Jacksonville came out slow, was outhustled and, perhaps worst of all, seemed to be outcoached on Sunday. The debacle in San Diego was far and away the worst contest in the NFL this weekend, even more disgusting than the Cardinals blowing out the Buccaneers. The Chargers were without Keenan Allen and lost Danny Woodhead — THE two key cogs in their passing attack — and still did whatever they wanted. The score was 35-zip heading into the fourth quarter. Philip Rivers threw four touchdown passes against just seven incompletions. Yes, Blake Bortles put up some box-score numbers for the Jags, but the preponderance of his production was of the Carson-Palmer-with-the- Raiders garbage variety.
No team has run more offensive plays while trailing than the 0-2 Jaguars this season. The Ravens could add to that total for the Jaguars in Week 3.
My take:
I don’t think the Jaguars are the worst team in the league, but I’d have no problem if someone had ranked them at number 32. We only have 2 weeks worth of games to judge and the Jaguars week 2 performance was the arguably the worst of any team so far in 2016.
If the Jaguars don’t show up on Sunday against the Ravens, it won’t be hard for virtually every analyst to plant them down at the bottom of their rankings.
