Bortles benched as bickering Jags keep crumbling with decisive loss to Texans ... Tucker’s first career missed PAT dooms Ravens ... Cowboys kicker clanks the bar
The Jacksonville Jaguars appear to be crumbling. They’re bad, and they’re bickering — big time.
Their defence is still pretty good, if not great, as expected. It’s just that the offence — without running back Leonard Fournette and with quarterback Blake Bortles regressing at light-speed — is downright terrible.
This, apparently, has turned the defending AFC South champions and conference title-game participants into one frustrated club.
The Jags (3-4) lost decisively at home Sunday to division rival Houston Texans, 20-7. Jacksonville now has lost three in a row and four of five, after opening the season 2-0. Jacksonville head coach
Doug Marrone benched Bortles early in the third quarter. While backup QB Cody Kessler led Jacksonville on one touchdown drive, in the end he wasn’t much better.
Afterward, numerous reports said as the Jags’ locker room opened for reporters per usual, it quickly closed again, as some kind of verbal and perhaps even physical altercation went down between or among players.
Tweeted reporter James
Palmer of NFL Network: “We could see and hear ... a very heated (argument) going on with players in the locker room. We were told to come back out and wait.”
ESPN reported that defensive end Calais Campbell could be seen restraining position mate Yannick Ngakoue amid all the shouting. Outspoken Jags cornerback
Jalen Ramsey later said: “Y’all see how it is in here ... It’s no secret what’s going on here right now. Ain’t nobody going to say it because you know, we can’t.”
Marrone’s benching of Bortles was about time. Bortles has been terrible for weeks now. At the time he was pulled, Houston led 20-0 and Bortles had completed just 6-of-12 for 61 yards, and he lost two fumbles.
Over the past two off-seasons the club showed more faith in Bortles than he’d probably earned. No matter, it’s hard to see how coaches can play him again any time soon. Because since Week 3, Bortles has thrown only three touchdowns, against seven interceptions and five lost fumbles. Horrendous play for a team ready otherwise, perhaps, to go another long playoff run.
So, is the benching temporary, short-term, permanent or what?
“(My) thought process was, you (can’t) take all 11 (players on offence) out,” Marrone said. “You don’t have enough people to put in. (It’s) not like he had played worse than anyone out there. He had two fumbles.
“I just literally did it to try and get a damn spark from this football team, to put everyone on notice. They have to focus and go out there and play better. At points in the second half they did it. That’s not fair to the quarterback, but that’s how the business is.”
Actually, in Bortles’ case, the benching was fair.
Fournette, meantime, not only missed Sunday’s loss to the Texans, but ESPN reported he’s not expected to play again until Nov. 11.
Fournette injured a hamstring early in Jacksonville’s opener against the New York Giants, and since then has played only briefly against the New York Jets in Week 4, when he reinjured it. The second-year former LSU star hasn’t practised since.
Next Sunday, the Jaguars play the similarly 3-4 and struggling Philadelphia Eagles in London, before a bye week.
Last Friday, the Jaguars acquired Carlos Hyde from the Cleveland Browns, in the hope he might better fill Fournette’s cleats as the pounding, yards-chewing, between-the-tackles runner on which the effectiveness of the Jaguars offence seems so greatly to depend.
Look, it’s not uncommon for playoff teams to have a record around .500 come mid-October, or even mid-November, before closing strong. If anyone knows this fact it’s Jaguars head of football operations Tom
Coughlin, who as head coach took two Giants teams to Super Bowl championships, in 2007 and 2011, both times after struggling through most of the regular season.
Those Giants squads hardened their resilience by overcoming so many mid- and late-season challenges.
With each passing week now it appears less and less likely that this Jacksonville team can become that kind of resilient playoff qualifier. Unless they obtain a better quarterback. Fast.
DECISIVE MISSED KICKS
Two late-afternoon games came down to missed placekicks.
The Ravens appeared ready to tie it up against New Orleans in a whale of a cross-conference matchup in Baltimore, but possibly the most reliable placekicker in NFL history — Justin Tucker
— sliced his extra point barely wide right with 24 seconds left, and the Saints escaped with a 24-23 victory.
It was the first conversion miss of Tucker’s career, after
making his first 222 over seven-plus seasons.
Ravens QB Joe Flacco had just hit receiver John Brown on a beautifully thrown lob into the back right corner of the end zone for a 14-yard score.
In Washington, the Dallas Cowboys set up to attempt a game-tying 47-yard field goal on the final play of regulation, but Louis-Philippe
(L.P.) Ladouceur of Montreal, in his 14th NFL season, was flagged for an illegal snap, after barely lifting the ball before snapping it, which drew a Redskins defender offside.
That lengthened Brett
Maher’s attempt to 52 yards, and he clanked it off the left upright. The ball ricocheted left, no good, for a 20-17 Washington win.
The Redskins improved to 4-2, and now sit a game-anda-half up on both Dallas and Philadelphia (at 3-4) atop the NFC East.
EXTRA POINTS
At 7-0 the Los Angeles Rams remain the NFL’s lone undefeated team, after pasting the host San Francisco 49ers, 39-10. Jared Goff threw two touchdown passes, one to running back
Todd Gurley, who also rushed for two scores ... Quarterback Derek Anderson, thrust into playing for the Buffalo Bills less than two weeks after signing with the club, tried his best to move the team despite the extreme disadvantage of unpreparedness. While he completed 20-of-31 attempts for 175 yards — really, not bad at all considering — he also threw three interceptions, as the Colts held the Bills without a touchdown in a 37-5 pounding. Indianapolis QB Andrew Luck threw for only 156 yards, but connected on four scoring strikes, while running back
Marlon Mack ran for 126 yards and a score.