Jaguars flopped Sunday but there’s no cause for concern

By Hays Carlyon

Uninspired.

Lousy.

Embarrassing.

Those are a few words that would describe the Jaguars poor effort in a 34-3 thrashing at the hands of the visiting San Francisco 49ers on a gloomy Sunday at EverBank Stadium.

The Jaguars got whipped in the trenches all afternoon. Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence seemingly was feeling the pressure from his first drop back in what was easily one of the worst performances in his young career.

The Jaguars committed four turnovers but made up for it by not getting one.

“This was definitely a humbling experience today,” Jaguars coach Doug Pederson said. “For us, we’re still trying to get there. I told the team again, we haven’t done anything here. We’re trying to be like that. We’re trying to have that consistency and to me this will be in some ways good for our players. A little bit of a wakeup call, quite honestly, myself included.”

This was one of the worst performances at home the Jaguars have ever had, nearly equaling a 41-3 rout to Chicago back on Oct. 7, 2012.

“You have got to feel the pain and embarrassment of today, and that’s what it is,” Lawrence said. “It’s terrible. It’s one of the worst games I’ve probably played in my career. So, I feel that and I take responsibility for that and, yeah, we couldn’t do anything right today, but you got to flush it too.”

If you paid money to attend this debacle or spent time out of your day to watch it, I apologize on behalf of the Jaguars.

But I’m not worried about the team in the long term.

The last time this happened was when Houston beat the Jaguars 37-17 in this building. The Jaguars responded with a five-game winning streak.

I’ll take a disaster, followed by five wins, and then another disaster in every seven-game stretch from now until eternity. You would to, especially given the history of this franchise.

The Jaguars (6-3) remain in front of the AFC South, although Houston (5-4) upsetting Cincinnati was far from ideal.

Still, I believe the Jaguars will respond from this humiliation.

Wake-up calls are part of life in the NFL. Frankly, the Jaguars could’ve played well and still lost this game. The 49ers (6-3) are certainly one of the best teams in the NFL. San Francisco had dropped three consecutive games and were playing with an edge on Sunday the Jaguars couldn’t match.

You might not like that teams need to lose sometimes to have an edge but it’s the nature of today’s NFL.

The next two games are going to be way more critical for the Jaguars than this NFC matchup. The Jaguars host Tennessee in their first meeting this season before a gigantic rematch at Houston.

“We’re going to wallow in it tonight,” Lawrence said. “We’re going to watch the tape tomorrow and kind of relive it, which is going to suck. Then we’re going to move on and we’re going to get ready for Tennessee. That’s the biggest game of the year. …There’s not much good to take from this one today.”

This defeat will still be fresh for a while.

The Jaguars should be angry. They will need to be.

They got pushed around on Sunday. They looked like a team that spent its bye week slugging down pina coladas. They looked like frauds.

That perception should provide motivation.

The regular season is all about winning the AFC South.

Losing to San Francisco does little to deter that mission.

If the Jaguars respond well in the next two weeks, this will be a blip.

“We all have to think about what are we willing to give up these next eight games so we don’t do this again,” Pederson said. “I think our players will rebound. They always have.”

I agree. Sunday was a total failure but my bet is this butt kicking will elevate their level of play because that’s what happened last time.

Bring on the Titans.

(You can email Hays at [email protected] and follow him on X/Twitter @HaysCarlyon).