If I'm being completely honest, the Jacksonville Jaguars looked much better against the Green Bay Packers than I anticipated. When people asked me prior to the game what I thought the score would be, it was something like 34-20 Packers, because I didn't think the Jaguars had the pass rush to hold the Packers offense in check and would be in for a long day.
That ended up being kind of true, but overall the team was able to go toe-to-toe with one of the NFL's perennial playoff teams and Super Bowl contenders. It was a game that shined a light on a lot of both positive things for the Jaguars, but it also put a spotlight directly on some of the Jaguars warts.
We'll talk about the pass rush in another piece, but I actually thought for the most part both Dante Fowler and Yannick Ngakoue had pretty good days for their rookie debuts. Their pass rush was lacking, but that was to be expected, but they held up really well against the run and were a big factor there.
The Jaguars offense seemed to be much more balanced with measured shots down the field with only a handful of YOLO balls, one of which nearly won the game and just happened to end up being the "30" in those 70/30 balls to Allen Robinson. I think the team did end up missing Chris Ivory, who was a shock inactive after going to the hospital the morning of the game, but they stuck with the run game and it helped keep them balanced, though not really effective.
The game made me more hopeful for the season, because it was right there for the taking and had the Jaguars gotten maybe one of the five horribly missed PI calls on Allen Robinson, it might have been a different ball game.
Oh, and it was nice to see the Jaguars kept Bryan Walters and Chris Smith on the roster to be healthy scratches.