Once again, the folks at Samsung are doing their Defining Moment Campaign. Once again, I'd like you to take 15 seconds and vote for my "moment", simply because it's a nice thing to do!
Here's my "Defining Moment"
The Jaguars first offensive possession started off without much fanfare. Short runs, short passes and an under-thrown deep throw to Marcades Lewis left the team looking at a 4th down punt. Now, anyone who follows the Jaguars know they have a tendency to push their luck and go for it on 4th down. In fact, going into the Bills game, the Jaguars had gone for it on 26 4th down situations, converting about 50% of them. In this case they were just too far in their own territory (46 yard line) and had too far to go (4 yards) for any serious attempt.
The Jaguars would have to find another way to get the ball back and score.
Jaguars Special Teams Coordinator Joe DeCamillis has had a difficult season, working with a rookie punter that's shown moments of frustration and brilliance, dealing with the loss of the starting kicker during the warmups of the opening game, working with a kicking situation that made long field goals or short field punts difficult. Now he faced one of the best special teams unit in the league with two terrific returners in Roscoe Parish and Terrance McGee.
DeCamillis had spend part of the week practicing a special type of punt that could potentially draw the Bills into making a mistake that would keep the Jaguars offense alive. What they did was practice a "hurry up" punt, where the offense gets off the field as quickly as possible while the punt team gets out there and runs the punt as soon as all of the offense is off the field. What it does is force the receiving team to get everyone in place quickly, otherwise they could get flagged for a 10 men on the field penalty.
Which is exactly what happened, Podlesh got the punt off while some of the Bills were coming off of the field, drawing the flag and giving the Jaguars just enough penalty yardage for the first down.
This play would only work once, and it's only applied in situations where the Jaguars have 4 yards or less to go, but in this case it was exactly what the Jaguars needed to keep a drive alive.
You'd think this would be where the Jaguars would start another long pounding drive that wears down the Bills defense and leaves all their play-makers on the sideline. Thanks to two crushing blocks by Maurice Williams and Tony Pashos, Running Back Fred Taylor would explode through the hole, blast past the Bills linebackers, and take a first down run into a 50 yard touchdown.
These two plays set up the Jaguars first half, and while there would be moments in the rest of the game that would leave the outcome up in the air, the Jaguars would never be behind the Bills for the rest of the game. Sure, they have some red-zone issues, but these two plays set the tempo of the game and left the Bills in "chase mode" for the rest of the game.
That sounds like a Defining Moment to me...
This is the end of our "Bills" discussion, cause it's all about the Colts!
-Chris
