Signing on and reading the content on BCC has been a tough thing for me to do this week. Seeing as I'm in college, the month of December is usually not the most fun of months because of big, bad finals. I'm sure I'm not the only person on BCC in this situation. When it comes to studying I always use a technique that my dad taught me a long time ago. He called it the K.I.S.S. theory. "Keep It Simple, Stupid." Basically the K.I.S.S. theory means don't make it more complicated than it has to be.
Attention Dirk Koetter, keep it simple, stupid.
Against the Titans, the Jaguars ran the ball on 14 of the first 15 plays and controlled the ball for about 40 minutes. The Jaguars did not turn the ball over and didn't do anything fancy. It was pretty simple. They ran the ball, controlled the clock, stopped Chris Johnson and ultimately choked the life out of the Titans. Now the Jaguars need to take that gameplan and cut and paste it into the gameplan for this week's matchup against the Raiders.
Now it's probably a going to be a tougher gameplan to execute against the Raiders than it was against the Titans. Mostly because they're better at running the ball than the Titans and they're not in a horrible downward spiral with an offense that hasn't scored a touchdown in 13 consecutive quarters. Also, defensively they're not nearly as banged up as the Titans were on the interior of their defensive line.
All that said, stick to the plan Dirk. Maurice Jones-Drew has himself in the talks for MVP after 5 consecutive 100+ yard games, including his 186 yard performance last week. Ride the hot hand, pound the ball and don't turn it over. While Oakland is the team that held the league's best running team to 104 yards rushing and held 4 other teams to 75 yards or fewer, they're a team that has allowed over 150 yards rushing 5 times.
For the Jaguars, winning the game will come down to the trenches on both sides of the ball with the most telling stat of the game will likely being the time of possession. The Jaguars' set the NFL's season mark for most carries by a team in a single game with 53 last week. The Raiders ran it 52 times last week. If the Jaguars can manage to have the ball for anywhere near the 40 minutes of last week, they should be able to get the victory.