The Indianapolis Colts put up a fight in that fourth quarter, but the Jacksonville Jaguars struck again at home.
As always, with the game having just wrapped up, here are our instant takeaways from what we saw:
– The Colts secondary, which had big question marks coming into the season and is now dealing with injuries, was picked apart by Trevor Lawrence. It was an efficient performance from Lawrence who also generated some explosive pass plays as well.
– Not helping the secondary was all the time that Lawrence had in the pocket. Given the injuries along the defensive front, this probably should have been expected to some degree, and for a team that’s built to win in the trenches, not doing so has a big impact on the rest of the defense.
– The Jacksonville offensive game-plan also appeared to be centered around mitigating the Colts’ pass rush with a heavy-dose of quick passes, screens, and play-action. The running backs were also involved in the passing game as well.
– Previous matchups have zero bearing on this one, but this is now the 10th straight loss on the road to the Jaguars.
– I thought coming into the game with the Colts facing a Jaguars defense that was allowing 7.7 yards per pass attempt–which ranked 30th–that we would see the passing game try to exploit the corners. However, there wasn’t much of that taking place with Flacco averaging under 6.0 yards per attempt until those final fourth quarter minutes. It felt like a very conservative approach against a unit that has struggled and it resulted in a disjointed performance for long stretches in this game because it’s not as if there was a strong run game to lean on either.
– The sample size is only continuing to grow for Alec Pierce, who continues to be one of the most productive deep threats in football this season.
– Tyler Goodson did provide a bit of a spark in the run game, but again, that was probably never going to be the Colts’ path to victory in this one. For starters, they didn’t have Jonathan Taylor, and the Jaguars have held up well against the run this season.
– AD Mitchell had a much larger role in this game than he has the last two weeks. He finished with a modest four receptions for 38 yards.
– For the second week in a row, Josh Downs was Flacco’s go-to option in the passing game, leading the team in targets, receptions, and yards. Each week, Downs needs to continue to be a focal point in the passing game.
– Mo Alie-Cox obviously hasn’t seen a lot of targets this season, but on the ones thrown his way, they’ve generated some explosive plays.
– It flies under the radar, but punter Rigoberto Sanchez continues to play really well. He had three punts and two of them pinned the Jaguars inside their own 20 yard line and the other two–because the Colts were backed up in their own territory–he didn’t have the opportunity to do so, but he hit some big kicks.
– Overall, it wasn’t great for the Colts’ secondary, but Jaylon Jones again had some high impact plays, which included forcing a pass breakup on a fourth-down throw and forcing a fumble. Plays like that are happening more often for him. Sam Womack had another big pass breakup late to force a punt.
– Similarly to last week, the defense was holding on as much as they could for the first two or two and a half quarters, coming up with some big stops at moments, but then the dam broke with the Jaguars scoring touchdowns on three straight possessions between the third and fourth quarters–and then, of course, there was the final drive. There’s just not enough consistent playmaking on this side of the ball right now.
– It felt like it was all or nothing for the Jaguars run game. The Colts either bottled them up, or Tank Bigsby was ripping off some huge gains.
– Key stats: The Colts won the turnover battle for the third straight game. They also won the time of possession battle as well–a rarity this season–and were 3-of-5 in the red zone while the Jaguars were 2-for-4. On third downs, the Colts were fairly efficient, converting 7-of-14 attempts while Jacksonville was 3-for-10, but didn’t run into as many third downs by comparison.