Jaguars decide to sit Luke Joeckel in preseason finale

The Jacksonville Jaguars have decided that both Kelvin Beachum and Luke Joeckel will not be playing in Thursday's preseason finale against the Atlanta Falcons. It's understandable why Beachum will not be playing, as he's still coming back from a torn ACL and the team just wanted to get an eye on him in live reps against the Cincinnati Bengals and everything looked fine, but the decision to sit Luke Joeckel doesn't really make much sense.

The team announced that Beachum will be the starting left tackle for Week 1, which means Joeckel will be starting at left guard against the Green Bay Packers. He's only played about 20-25 snaps at the position in live game action and his first go wasn't very good, overall.

Part of that was just poor footwork and trying to deal with Geno Atkins, but part of it is also he's not very familiar with the position because he hasn't really played it much in live action. He needs reps at the position and Thursday night is a premium chance to get that for him. It's a meaningless preseason game but it's live action.

It's not going to change at this point, but it seems like a mistake to not have Joeckel play 20-30 reps on Thursday night.