Trevor Lawrence and the Jacksonville Jaguars’ first-team offense were surgical in the red zone on Thursday.
Competing against the Carolina Panthers in a joint practice, Lawrence completed all three of his redzone attempts for touchdowns. The second-team offense had several spikes as well.
Lawrence’s first score came against former teammate Devin Lloyd, who was moved out of the picture by Lawrence’s eyes as Brenton Strange used his physicality to shake off a defensive back and pop wide open. The second
score was a tight-window dart between two defenders to Nate Boerkircher, and the third score was a quick-hitting in-breaker to Jakobi Meyers. The veteran wideout showcased his concentration by snatching the ball cleanly despite a tip at the line of scrimmage.
There were no easy completions. If you go back and watch each clip, even the fastball to Meyers required some post-snap processing from Lawrence.
Head coach Liam Coen didn’t seem surprised by the outing, which followed a strong redzone performance against the New Orleans Saints in last week’s joint practice. “I mean, I thought we were pretty good the back half of the year in the red zone. I think we finished in the top five in the NFL.”
According to NFL Pro, Jacksonville ranked fourth in touchdowns (43) and yards per play (3.3) in the red zone last season. Pretty impressive, considering they also ranked 25th in rushing success rate and 31st in average target separation.
“It also helps when the quarterback can run,” said Coen. “That, obviously, you don’t necessarily see in this setting. But he did scramble, right? He made a couple of off-schedule throws, and that’s what I would attribute a lot of it to, to be honest.”
“When we got better in the red zone last year was when Trevor started using his legs. And we saw that again today. It’s so hard to scheme wide-open or open receivers in the red zone. It’s so much tighter. There’s less vertical grass. And especially versus a three-man, four-man rush, it’s challenging. And so, you watch around the league of the top red-zone touchdowns every week, and 90 percent of them are off schedule. They’re just, ‘Hey man, you got to buy a little time. Find a window. Somebody’s got to make a little move and boom, touchdown.’ And it’s not exactly how you draw it up, but it’s football.”
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