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| The Jaguars played a good enough game to retain my interest, but still look like a bad team. |
The 27-10 final score doesn’t exactly tell the whole story
of last night’s game. The Jaguars seemed to play better than the 17-point
deficit indicates, but it was an easy win for the Colts.
Andrew Luck continues to impress. He makes all the throws
and he is always so calm, never rushed. On one play late in the game, after Dawan
Landry hit him as he slid on a scramble, he pushed all his players away when
they started defending him and going after Landry. This is as good a young
quarterback as I’ve ever seen, and I watched Peyton Manning’s rookie campaign.
As for the Jaguars, the offense is definitely a concern.
Blaine Gabbert actually played a decent game, though when he went out with a
shoulder injury and Chad Henne stepped in, Henne looked like he should be the
starting quarterback.
The problem right now for Jacksonville is that they have no
playmakers. Laurent Robinson, who broke out as a #3 receiver in Dallas last
year, made plenty or grabs last night but he couldn’t deliver many yards after
the catch. Justin Blackmon was uninvolved, and that leaves Cecil Shorts, who is
the star of this offense, not that it says much.
He made a fantastic grab in the second quarter of the game that
was reversed on the challenge, but I think it was a bad decision to take the
reception away. It was a route up the sideline; Gabbert threw a good but nearly
uncatchable pass. Shorts went up for it, caught it with one hand, came down,
and the ball popped out when he hit the ground. Initially it was called a
reception. Now, I know that if the ball comes out when you hit the ground, it’s
an incompletion. But after establishing two feed in bounds, another foot went
out of bounds before he hit the
ground, and my understanding of the rule is that he it then no longer matters
if he retains control all the way to the ground.
Reggie Wayne isn’t particularly young any more, but he sure
has been playing like it. Andrew Luck is so similar to Peyton, just more mobile
and maybe slightly less accurate, but because of the similarities, Wayne has
clicked with his quarterback very quickly and is playing at the level we
expected to see week in and week out during his first several years in the
league.
Jacksonville lost control of the game mostly because of
turnovers. The Colts had only forced three turnovers during their first eight
games, which tied an NFL record for fewest takeaways in the first half of the
season. Last night, they doubled their takeaways for the year as the Jaguars
lost possession three times on turnovers.
Jacksonville is in a rough spot, but I saw some things in
the offense that they can build on to have a successful team, not this year,
but down the road if they make the most of the offseason. I saw enough, in
fact, that I might be willing to move them out of the bottom floor of the
league and replace them with the Chiefs, but this is still a bad team and one
that might not win another game this season.
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