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The Jacksonville Jaguars defense has been bad all season. It's a unit we knew would be bad heading into the season. I've held off on teeing off on the defense for that very reason, but everyone has a breaking point. I've reached mine.
This Jacksonville Jaguars defense is some kind of bad.
A lot of us thought that this Jaguars defense just needed a pass rush. It was a wide belief that improving the pass rush would trickle out to the rest of the defense and improve coverage. It makes sense right? Lessening the time the quarterback has to throw lessens the time to cover and should in turn lessen a quarterback's ability to take the Jaguars defense behind the woodshed, right?
Nope.
Jaguars Defensive Area | Stat | Rank |
Yards Per Game | 382.1 | 30th |
Points Per Game | 29.9 | 31st |
Passing Yards Per Game | 253.1 | 27th |
Rushing Yards Per Game | 129 | 25th |
Opposing QB Rating | 113 | 31st |
20+ Yard Passing Plays | 28 | 32nd |
40+ Yard Passing Plays | 9 | 32nd |
Rushing Touchdowns Allowed | 10 | 31st |
Passing Touchdowns Allowed | 16 | 32nd |
3rd Down % | 47 | 31st |
As you can see... It's bad. It's bad all over.
I harp so much on the offense because we knew the defense would be bad, as I said. Anyone who watched the pre-season knew that. I don't think any of us expected the offense to struggle how it has, but that only makes a bad defense exponentially worse. The Jaguars offense is in the bottom half of the NFL in 3rd percentage on offense, and when you combine bad 3rd down plays on offense with the inability to get off the field on third down... It's a recipe for disaster.
To be quite honest, looking at all the hard numbers it's astonishing the Jaguars are 3-4.
What makes this even worse and the "Fire Del Rio" crowd louder is the fact that Jack Del Rio is calling the defense.