Anthony Campanile’s 2025 defense in Jacksonville had a very clear identity, and it wasn’t built on sacks.
The Jaguars finished 27th in the NFL in sacks, yet still piled up 31 turnovers in 17 regular-season games. That split tells the whole story: this unit wasn’t living in the backfield by consistently finishing the quarterback, but it was hunting takeaways with purpose.
Jacksonville averaged just under two takeaways per game while dealing with the league’s second-fastest time to throw metrics against it. The approach was straightforward - shut down the run on first down, dial up heavy blitz looks on second and fourth downs, then use stunts and games to force mistakes on passing downs.
More often than not, it worked.
When Jacksonville won the turnover battle, it went 8-1. The only loss in that stretch came against the Cincinnati Bengals, and it came on a late fourth-down pass interference call that many in Duval would say never should have been thrown. Strip away that play, and the Jaguars were essentially flawless when they controlled turnovers.
The rest of the record drives the point home. Including the Wild Card loss to Buffalo, Jacksonville went 3-3 when the turnover battle was even and 2-1 when it lost the turnover margin. In games where the Jaguars didn’t force a turnover at all, they went 1-2, with losses to the Seattle Seahawks and Los Angeles Rams and a lone win in a Week 12 overtime game against the Arizona Cardinals.
The numbers also show just how far Jacksonville ran ahead of the league norm. A Harvard study cited in the source says NFL teams with a positive turnover differential win 69.4 percent of the time.
The Jaguars won 88.9 percent of their games with a positive differential in 2025. The same study says teams with a +1 turnover edge win 69.4 percent of games, +2 jumps to 82.3 percent, and +3 reaches 91.4 percent.
That brings the conversation to the offseason departure that matters most on defense: Devin Lloyd, who signed with the Carolina Panthers this spring.
Lloyd’s 2025 season was impossible to ignore. He tied for second in the NFL in interceptions, and he did it on a defense that finished second in the league in interceptions as a unit.
But the raw total only tells part of the story. His biggest plays came in the biggest spots.
Jacksonville likely doesn’t beat the Kansas City Chiefs without his Pick-6, and his two-interception game in a five-point win over the San Francisco 49ers was just as important.
There’s also a wrinkle that changes how Lloyd’s departure should be viewed. Four of his five interceptions came before Week 6.
After missing two games with a calf injury, he had just one interception over the final ten regular-season games. During that same stretch, the Jaguars’ turnover production stayed afloat because Antonio Johnson stepped into a bigger role.
Johnson’s rise came after Eric Murray’s neck injury and Jacksonville’s increased use of three-safety packages against the Rams and Seahawks. His snap count climbed, and so did his ball production.
Four of his five interceptions came after the bye week, almost perfectly overlapping with the period when Lloyd’s takeaway pace slowed. What looked from the outside like one steady turnover machine was actually a defense that shifted its main playmaker midway through the season.
That matters now, because it suggests Jacksonville may not be quite as dependent on Lloyd as the headline numbers make it seem. Johnson enters 2026 after earning the top overall PFF safety grade in the NFL, and the Jaguars also added third-round rookie Jalen Huskey while getting Caleb Ransaw back. That gives the safety room more depth and more potential playmakers.
Ventrell Miller’s absence from the discussion is not a statement that he can’t perform at Lloyd’s level from 2025. It is simply a recognition that Lloyd leaves a big void, even if Lloyd himself wasn’t producing at his early-season pace all year.
And that leads to the real issue for Campanile’s defense in 2026: what happens when the turnovers stop coming? That question hung over parts of the 2025 regular season and showed up again in the postseason loss.
If Jacksonville wants to stay in the top tier of turnover-forcing defenses, that isn’t just a nice bonus. It’s the requirement.
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