Jaguars defense wanted to keep Aaron Rodgers in pocket

In the Jacksonville Jaguars loss to the Green Bay Packers, defensively they did enough to win the ball game, but they were facing a guy named Aaron Rodgers who also did just enough to win the ball game, and actually won. The team only sack of Rodgers was on a scramble where they caught him prior to crossing the line of scrimmage, but other than that it was a pretty clean day for the Packers quarterback, but that may have been somewhat by design.

"We went in with the idea that we had to control [Aaron] Rodgers first of all. We knew going through the explosive plays from 2015 and 2014 when they really had a bunch of them and they were at full strength," Jaguars defensive coordinator Todd Wash told reporters on Wednesday. "When he gets outside of the pocket there are some major issues we have to deal with. We tried to keep him in the pocket and there were some plays that he got out of the pocket and hurt us this game, which ultimately kind of cost us."

In a way, that makes sense, but Rodgers is still the kind of quarterback who can beat you while still sitting in the pocket as we saw on Sunday. Though, to Wash's credit they kept him under 200 passing yards and he was off target on quite a few of his throws.

That type of game plan isn't going to work on Sunday against Phillip Rivers and the San Diego Chargers however, as Rivers will just gobble up defenses if allowed to sit in the pocket without pressure from the edge.

"This week obviously the game plan is a lot different. We are facing an excellent quarterback again," Wash added. "I don't think it ever changes. It is a situation where the game plan changes. We look forward to how we are game planning right now to get after him and obviously control their wide outs."

The Jaguars are facing a Chargers team who just lost their best offensive threat for the season, then again the Chargers didn't have Keenan Allen last season when they throttled the Jaguars on the road. This year the team's secondary is significantly better than previous years and even though Sunday was an issue, the pass rush should be better as well. Rookies Dante Fowler and Yannick Ngakoue showed some positive signs against the Packers and in San Diego they should be turned lose more so than they were in Week 1.