The bye week comes with mixed feelings.
On one hand, Jacksonville is 4-3 with the toughest part of its schedule out of the way. On the other hand, there’s been a lot of uninspiring football over the past two games. The Jaguars got bullied in consecutive weeks.
“We cannot, absolutely not, go back and try to reinvent the wheel here,” head coach Liam Coen said Monday.
“There’s times where you’ve got to go and dig deep and go reinvent the wheel because you’ve got a bunch of holes. Well, I don’t think that’s
the case. We have not played our best the last two weeks going into the bye, which does kind of suck. It does. It’s not a great feeling, but everything’s ahead of us and my thing to this team is going to be, ‘Man guys, we have done so many good things. We are a really good football team, but not when we hurt ourselves.’”
As Week 8 approaches, we rounded up the latest NFL power rankings to get a sense of how the Jaguars are viewed nationally.
Pro Football Talk: 13 (last week: 12)
The win over the Chiefs was supposed to be a turning point.
USA Today: 14 (9)
Now we’re gonna force-feed rookie WR/CB Travis Hunter 14 targets, twice as many as Brian Thomas Jr. got Sunday? What’s going on here?
Fox Sports: 15 (12)
Since beating the Chiefs and moving to 4-1 and turning their fans into believers, the Jaguars have lost two straight to the Seahawks and Rams. Most concerning: Jacksonville has scored a combined 19 points in those two games.
NFL.com: 15 (13)
Liam Coen went up against his former master and came up short — way short . This isn’t meant to be a personal shot at Coen, but his team looked unprepared against Sean McVay’s Rams in London, and things just haven’t looked right since the dramatic victory over the Chiefs, which suddenly feels like it occurred ages ago. Travis Hunter had his breakout game, which is nice, but Jacksonville seems to have a Brian Thomas Jr. problem. Really, the overall product was replete with self-inflicted errors. Now the Jaguars have the bye to diagnose what has gone wrong and how to fix things ahead of a stretch with four of five games on the road. There are some winnable ones, but given the way the Jags have looked over the last two weeks, nothing’s guaranteed.
The Athletic: 16 (10)
From Josh Kendall and Chad Graff:
A blowout loss in London revealed a hard truth about the Jags. They’re just not one of the league’s better teams, which seemed possible after four straight wins earlier this season. They’ve undoubtedly come a long way in Liam Coen’s first season, but the passing game is still lacking.
ESPN: 17 (15)
Unsung nonstarter/role player: S Rayuan Lane III. The rookie sixth-round pick out of Navy has played 11 defensive snaps this season, but he has been one of the Jaguars’ top special teams players, especially as a gunner on punt coverage. He made solid tackles on back-to-back punts against Seattle to pin the Seahawks deep two weeks ago, and he had three against Kansas City the week before that. Lane has a team-high six special teams tackles and might get time on defense if starting safety Eric Murray continues to sit out because of a neck injury.
The Ringer: 18 (15)
Jacksonville has put up multiple offensive stinkers this year, and I’m not certain we can lay all the blame on quarterback Trevor Lawrence. The box score from Sunday morning’s blowout loss to the Rams would paint Lawrence out to be an inaccurate passer, but it felt like there were a dozen instances of his receivers letting him down with drops or poor effort. If his supporting cast won’t do their respective jobs, we shouldn’t pretend like the poor results are Lawrence’s fault alone.
Yahoo Sports: 19 (14)
Few teams looked worse in Week 7. The gap between the Jaguars and Colts in the AFC South continues to grow. The Jaguars have lost any momentum they gained from what looked like a breakthrough win over the Chiefs in Week 5.
Bleacher Report: 19 (17)
Week 7 was when the season started to unravel for the Jacksonville Jaguars—or at least that’s what people will be saying in a month. Two weeks ago, after the Jags got past Kansas City Chiefs under the lights, those same people were wondering whether a 4-1 Jacksonville team might be a real threat in the AFC South. Since then, the Jags have been handled at home by Seattle and blown out by the Rams where nearly every stat is relatively even except for the score. Well, that and four unsuccessful fourth-down tries. And the 13 penalties. The Jaguars aren’t a bad team. But they are too reliant on takeaways on defense and too inconsistent on offense to be a good one.
Sports Illustrated: 20 (13)
I think two things can be true at once: Trevor Lawrence has by far the most incompletions in the NFL due to wide receiver error or straight-up drop. And without a historical surge in extra possessions from a turnover-happy defense and a white-hot running game, he struggles to be as effective.
CBS Sports: 20 (14)
Two straight losses have them limping into their bye. The offense has all kinds of issues, and when the defense isn’t taking the ball away it’s ordinary.
Where would you rank the team, Jaguars fans? Let us know in the comments!
