By Don Coble, Florida Sports Wire
There wasn’t much time for a Jacksonville celebration following Sunday’s remarkable final-second comeback against Philadelphia. While the Jaguars were as much relieved as they were giddy after Ameer Abdulah’s improbable 53-yard kickoff return and Cam Little’s 57-yard field goal – all in the final 8 seconds, they know they were lucky to get out of London’s Tottenham Hotspur Stadium with a 19-17 victory.
Jacksonville realized they can’t rely on miracle finishes, especially since Eagles coach Nick Sirianni took a wild, if not foolish, gamble by not kicking the ball into the endzone. That would have forced the Jaguars to start their final drive at their own 35, instead of the Philadelphia 39 – and well within Little’s range.
Jacksonville also knows they can’t continue their successful 4-1 start by making so many blunders.
“I was pretty frustrated at a lot of things – our offense, our team, myself, everything,” quarterback Trevor Lawrence said. “Just in that moment where we kind of lost our mind a little bit, some of the operational stuff we’ve got to clean up. [We had] too many penalties.”
The first of two games in the United Kingdom was about the good, the bad and the ugly.
The good: Lawrence completed 24 of 39 passes for 331 yards, and he threw touchdown passes of 51 and 27 yards to Parker Washington, who finished with six receptions for 124 yards. The Eagles also were hobbled by only 22 yards rushing on 18 carries.
The bad: for the second consecutive game, Jacksonville was flagged 13 times on Sunday. The Jaguars have been called for 41 accepted penalties for 346 yards this year. Cohen’s insistence to score touchdowns instead of field goals backfired twice. The Jaguars had a first-and-goal from the 1 yard-line in the final 15 seconds of the first half. They ran four unsuccessful plays and went into intermission down 14-7. Then in the fourth quarter, Lawrence’s pass to Jacobi Meyers on a fourth-and-five fell harmlessly on the artificial turf. And the team ran for only 33 yards on 13 carries.
The ugly: long-snapper Ross Matiscik injured his knee and was carted off the field. That forced defensive tackle Davon Hamilton into action for the first time since he was in high school. For the most part, he filled in admirably, but a high snap following Washington’s 27-yard TD catch in the fourth quarter led to Little missing the PAT kick. The Jaguars announced on Monday they plan to add a new long-snapper for next Sunday’s game at Wembley Stadium against Houston (1-4). Finally, Jacksonville’s defense allowed Jalen Hurts to drive Philadelphia 32 yards in 1 minute, 23 seconds to set up Jake Elliott’s 40-yard field goal that gave the Eagles a 17-16 lead with eight seconds to go.
“It wasn’t clean, a lot of penalties, didn’t execute in the red zone,” Cohen said. “[We] let them off the hook a lot on third and long. It just was a weird kind of vibe game, weird.
“We need to make some of those plays that we had opportunities to make in the red zone that we didn’t. Statistically, when you felt the flow of it, it never felt like it wasn’t we couldn’t get going. We were getting going, [then] it was like positive, negative, positive, negative. So as frustrating as it is, it still leaves you hope because you’re moving the ball. It just wasn’t really pretty.”
Lawrence said the key will be learning from the mistakes.
“We’re back rolling Wednesday,” Lawrence said. “We’ll have some time the next two days to adjust and look at the tape. [We’ve] got to keep getting better.”
