The Jaguars had their third double-digit penalty of the game season Sunday and it finally handed them a loss.
Liam Coen knew his job coaching the Jaguars wasn’t going to be a non-stop upward trajectory from the NFL toilet. There would be losses that would obviously be disappointing, but semi-understandable.
But it is the other kind of loss, the loss where his team can’t get out of its own way by figuratively whacking itself in the kneecaps that will redden Coen’s face.
Count Sunday’s 20-12 loss to the Seattle Seahawks in the "Reddened Face" category, which produces the first significant bit of adversity of the Coen Era.
The Jaguars continue to commit penalties. Their 10 against Seattle was their third game in double-digits and ran their season total to 52, a whopping 13 more than opponents.
This penalty stuff has become a crisis and Coen knows it.
“It’s on me,” he said when I asked about his frustration level. “It’s an undisciplined operation at the moment and it’s on me. It has to get fixed.”
It has to get fixed or all of the good vibes of starting 4-1 will soon be extinguished. These Jaguars aren’t built to overcome self-inflicted setbacks like 10 false starts, six illegal shifts (five declined), two offensive offsides and, new to the party against Seattle, two illegal formations.
Yes, the Jaguars had trouble lining up.
How can they expect to put together a drive, much less win a game, if they can’t accomplish the most basic of football tasks aside from clapping when the quarterback yells, “Break!”?
They can’t.
Coen will have the long flight to London Monday night/Tuesday morning to think about his approach heading into Sunday’s game against the Los Angeles Rams. Nothing should be off the table, whether it be pulling a player after a penalty (as unlikely as that would be) or simplifying the “undisciplined operation.”
The season is riding on it.
Penalties wiped out positive plays
Coen has been addressing the Jaguars’ lack of crispness since mid-August. Two days after the exhibition loss to Pittsburgh in which the Jaguars looked all kinds of sloppy, he conducted a back-to-basics practice.
Until Sunday, it hadn’t cost the Jaguars a game. Their Week 2 loss at Cincinnati was of the come-from-ahead variety. They didn’t trail until 18 seconds remaining, rolled up 400 yards offense and had three offensive penalties.
“This was a different deal,” Coen said of the Seahawks game.
Yes, it was.
Much different and much more infuriating for Coen.
The Seahawks are much better than Cincinnati. They sacked Trevor Lawrence seven times and held the Jaguars to a measly 3.1 yards per rush attempt. Things didn’t need to be perfect to beat them (they were without three starting defensive backs), but it had to be clean.
Instead, it was messy.
Coen knew this was an issue before Sunday so he tried to do something about it in practice.
“We tried to go tempo to chill out with the (pre-snap) motions and just line up and get in a formation to just go play,” he said.
Making matters worse is the penalties are wiping out positive plays.
Harrison’s first illegal formation penalty negated a 9-yard Travis Etienne rush; the Jaguars eventually punted.
Harrison’s second illegal formation penalty canceled a 7-yard pass to Etienne. On the same drive, Lawrence’s false start penalty turned a first-and-10 from the Seahawks’ 24 into a first-and-15; the Jaguars eventually missed a field goal.
And Hunter’s offside penalty brought back Brian Thomas Jr.’s 57-yard touchdown catch; the Jaguars scored a touchdown on the drive but used an additional 3:17 of the second-half game clock.
“False starts, illegal shifts and formations, that’s on us,” receiver Dyami Brown. “We have to home in on those details to even get a play off.”
Honest locker room conversation
Harrison was more direct about the magnitude of the penalties.
“We killed ourselves,” he said. “Without all the penalties, it would have been a different game.”
A different game, but who knows about a different result. The Jaguars’ defense allowed two 61-yard completions, one for the go-ahead-for-good touchdown and one Seattle used to wrap up the win. It is kind of remarkable the Jaguars only lost by eight.
Coen had an extended meeting with the team in the postgame locker room.
“We had a very honest conversation in there,” he said.
Honestly is always the best policy in pro football. Most of the time, it merely confirms what the players are thinking and believing.
The Jaguars know they have the goods to make a run to the AFC playoffs, especially with Baltimore and Cincinnati in the AFC North having fallen apart.
The Jaguars, Denver, New England and the Los Angeles Chargers are all 4-2, a game behind 5-1 Indianapolis. The Jaguars play at Denver, host the Chargers and play the Colts twice. The key will be sweeping Tennessee, winning at Las Vegas and Arizona and beating the woeful New York Jets. Just those games would push the Jaguars to nine wins.
The season remains in the Jaguars’ hands … as long as they don’t fumble it or false start or line up wrong of hold or, you get the point. Coen knows it.
“We will not beat good, quality teams on the road or home, London or the West Coast, if we continue to hurt ourselves and have those self-inflicted wounds,” Coen said. “We’ll try to figure it out from an operation and habits standpoint, what is standing in our way because right now it’s us.”
It’s about the Jaguars and it’s on the Jaguars to correct it. Quickly.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Jags going nowhere if penalty problem persists and Liam Coen knows it
Category: General Sports
