From No 1 to nowhere: was Trevor Lawrence to blame for the Jags’ playoff flop?

Jacksonville looked like they were cruising to a postseason berth until their campaign crumbled. Was their quarterback the problem?

The Jacksonville Jaguars had every opportunity to make the 2023 season a success. Instead they made it a disaster, culminating with their 28-20 loss at the Tennessee Titans on Sunday afternoon. The Jaguars needed only to beat a 5-11 team to clinch the AFC South. But Trevor Lawrence threw two interceptions and got stacked up shy of the goalline on a decisive fourth-and-goal keeper from the Titans' one-yard line. A last-gasp effort by the Jaguars wasn't enough to overcome a 15-point deficit entering the fourth quarter. And now the organization embarks on an offseason of figuring out how a year with such promise went so awry. The Houston Texans, not the Jags, will represent the division in the playoffs.

The Jaguars have been lousy for most of the 21st century, and they reached fresh depths of ignominy when they posted the league's worst record in both 2020 and 2021. (In the latter year, the franchise became a special kind of embarrassment because of the slapstick leadership of an overmatched head coach, Urban Meyer.) But the team made a quantum leap in 2022. Lawrence, the franchise quarterback they'd drafted with the first pick a season earlier, blossomed into one of the better quarterbacks in football. Edge rusher Josh Allen led a feisty defense. The Jaguars mounted a late-season charge to win the AFC South, and then pulled off a thrilling comeback win over the Los Angeles Chargers. They even scared the eventual Super Bowl winners, the Kansas City Chiefs, in the next round.