The Jacksonville Jaguarslet their Week 2 matchup against the Denver Broncos slip away. The Jaguars are now 1-1 on the season.
With the dust having somewhat settled on Sunday's performance, here are three takeaways from what we saw.
Late miscues by the Jaguars
Jacksonville held a 13-3 lead in the second half, but that is when things began to unravel. Even before that, Cam Little's field goal gave the Jaguars a 10-point lead, and LeQuint Allen dropped a pass near the end zone.
Then, an interception thrown by Trevor Lawrence led to a Denver touchdown drive that tied the game. The next possession ended with a missed field goal that would have given the Jaguars the lead. Lastly, a penalty and a failed rush attempt derailed the Jaguars' final possession.
Defensively, the Jaguars
couldn't get off the field in the second half. Three of Denver's four possessions went for at least eight plays, with three of those drives ending in points. When plays had to be made on both sides of the ball, the Jaguars couldn't come through.
Too many big plays in the passing game
There was good from the Jaguars' defense, but that was negated by too many explosive plays surrendered. Broncos' quarterback Bo Nix averaged 9.3 yards per pass attempt on Sunday. For some context, New England led the NFL in this category last season at 8.5 yards per throw.
Nix had two completions of 27 yards and another go for 49 yards. Helping Nix and the Denver offense find this downfield success was the time in the pocket he had.
Even if the Jaguars were able to slow the run game, mostly get off the field on third downs, and find some success in the red zone, in the NFL, big plays often lead to points and can be difficult to overcome.
Pressure vs. no pressure
The Broncos boast a disruptive defensive front, and as the game went on, that unit got to Lawrence more and more frequently. While Lawrence could overcome the chaos early on, it eventually became too much to overcome.
According to PFF's early tracking data, Lawrence was under duress on 35% of his dropbacks. Last week against Cleveland, he was pressured on just 24% of his dropbacks. He was sacked just twice, but hit seven times and pressured on 14 dropbacks, per PFF.
When under pressure, Lawrence was 3-for-9 passing for 54 yards with an interception. From a clean pocket, he completed 70% of his passes for 135 yards.
This article originally appeared on Jaguars Wire: 3 takeaways from Jaguars' Week 2 loss vs. Denver
