Week 3 started clearing the fog around the NFL, and one of the clearest pictures came in Jacksonville. The Jaguars looked every bit like a team that shouldn’t have been brushed aside after winning 13 games and the AFC South last season, hammering the Patriots 35-6 at home and moving to 2-1.
Trevor Lawrence led the way with three touchdown passes, and the Jaguars’ run game kept piling on, finishing with 137 yards on 4.6 yards per carry. Jacksonville turned a matchup between two 1-1 teams into a rout by scoring touchdowns on all five of its red-zone trips. Chris Rodriguez Jr. and Bhayshul Tuten each added a rushing score, while the defense forced two interceptions and a lost fumble from Drake Maye and brought him down three times.
Maye’s rough start only got rougher. He entered the game after throwing four interceptions over the first two weeks and added two more in the loss.
Through three games, he has six interceptions and just one touchdown. Dating back to the playoffs, his last seven games have been ugly: 1,214 passing yards, 6.9 yards per attempt, seven touchdown passes and 10 interceptions.
That’s not a slump. That’s a major problem.
The Jaguars, meanwhile, are winning with depth and structure more than big names. Liam Coen and defensive coordinator Anthony Campanile have squeezed a lot out of a roster that doesn’t feature a single All-Pro player and has only a handful of Pro Bowl-level pieces such as edge rushers Josh Hines-Allen and Travon Walker. Against New England, six different players finished with at least 25 rushing or receiving yards.
That matters in a division where Jacksonville has already opened up a two-game cushion on the preseason favorites. The Texans have already lost to the Bills, the Bengals and the Colts on Sunday, Indianapolis sits at 1-2, and Tennessee is off to another rough start at 0-3 in Robert Saleh’s first year. The Jaguars still have a difficult stretch ahead, though, with games against the Bengals, Eagles and Texans before hosting Indianapolis and visiting the Ravens.
New England’s problems are harder to ignore. If the Patriots are going to salvage this season, they need their second-team All-Pro quarterback to look like a star instead of a replacement-level starter.
At 1-2, they’re already in a bad spot, and the schedule is about to turn harsh with a road trip to unbeaten Buffalo before home games against the Raiders and Jets. A loss to the Bills would make repeating as AFC East champions a lot tougher, especially with Maye struggling this badly.
There’s also the question of whether Josh McDaniels needs to rethink the offense. The Patriots will have a hard time stretching the field without A.J.
Brown, who is recovering from a high ankle sprain for another month, but New England didn’t have a loaded group of perimeter playmakers last year either and still made it work. The burden now is simple: Maye has to play better, and McDaniels has to adjust.
Buffalo, for its part, survived a game that almost got away. The Bills committed five turnovers, including three by Josh Allen, yet still beat the Chargers 24-16 to stay unbeaten.
Los Angeles could only turn those mistakes into 10 points, and Justin Herbert’s end-zone interception in the third quarter flipped the game when the Chargers were in the red zone with a 13-10 lead. Herbert finished with 6.6 yards per attempt, while Allen escaped the chaos by rushing for two touchdowns.
Houston is trying to keep from sliding into real trouble, but the early signs are grim. After a 19-17 loss in Indianapolis, the Texans are tied with Tennessee for last in the AFC South.
The offense has been a mess, with C.J. Stroud already taking 10 sacks and completing fewer than 60% of his passes in each of the last two weeks.
Houston has scored just 23 total points against the Bengals and Colts.
The absence of Nico Collins over the last two weeks has mattered, but it doesn’t explain everything. General manager Nick Caserio spent the offseason rebuilding the offensive line, signing right guard Wyatt Teller and using a first-round pick on left guard Keylan Rutledge, and the results still haven’t been there.
Defensively, the Texans have flashed at times, piling up 11 sacks through three weeks, but they also allowed 36 points in Week 1 and have given up 776 passing yards. In Indianapolis, they even had a late lead before Daniel Jones & Co. went 29 yards in 92 seconds for the winning field goal.
The next three weeks could decide whether Houston stays afloat or starts thinking bigger-picture. The Cowboys and Jaguars are both headed to Houston in that stretch, and if the Texans can’t straighten things out, they could be sellers by the Nov. 10 trade deadline.
In Other News...
Trevor Lawrence Created A Jaguars Debate In A Game He Dominated
Trevor Lawrence spent much of Jacksonvilles win over New England doing exactly what the Jaguars needed, carving up the Patriots with a strong passing performance that added another layer to his place in the franchise record book. He threw three touchdown passes and, in the process, set the team mark for most games with three or more passing scores while moving into second place on the Jaguars all-time touchdown list.
Still, the moment people kept circling back to came late, when Lawrence opted to take a knee near the goal line instead of punching in another score. He said afterward he was trying to drain the clock and shrink New Englands chances, and he acknowledged the choice might not have been the best one. For a quarterback who otherwise dominated the afternoon, it was a rare decision that created a discussion Jacksonville did not necessarily expect to have after a comfortable win. [Read more 🡒]
Trevor Lawrence Gave Jaguars Fans One Strange Moment To Debate
Trevor Lawrence had the kind of afternoon Jaguars fans have been waiting for, steering Jacksonville to a 35-6 win over New England while looking sharp enough to quiet a lot of the early-season noise. He completed 19 of 29 passes for 182 yards and three touchdowns, and the game never really felt in doubt once the Jaguars got rolling against a Patriots team that struggled to handle the ball.
Still, the biggest postgame talking point had less to do with the score than one late sequence in the fourth quarter, when Lawrence took a knee at the 1-yard line and left fans puzzling over the choice in real time. The reaction spread quickly online, adding an odd little wrinkle to an otherwise comfortable victory, especially with Drake Maye enduring a rough day for New England and the Patriots coughing up multiple turnovers along the way. [Read more 🡒]
Jaguars Just Sent Mike Vrabel Into A Much Bigger Problem
The Jaguars 35-6 win over New England did more than pad a scoreline. It turned into the kind of lopsided result that can linger, especially for a Patriots team trying to find its footing under Mike Vrabel. For Jacksonville, it was the sort of complete performance that can make a statement in a hurry and send a message across the league about how quickly a game can get away from an opponent.
Vrabel did not hide how much the loss bothered him afterward, calling attention to the need for the Patriots to improve and move on. The timing makes the setback even tougher, because New Englands next test comes against the unbeaten Bills, and the Jaguars just left Vrabel with a much bigger problem to solve before that trip. [Read more 🡒]