How much does Pro Football Focus think the Jaguars will improve?

The projection for the Jacksonville Jaguars for the 2017 season are all over the place. You will see some very optimistic people and believers in Blake Bortles improvement project the team as high as 10-6 and you’ll see some project the team to be in the three win range again. It’s not really a surprise there is a lot of variance in the projections for the Jaguars win loss record, because well... if you look at their team it’s a pretty high variance team.

The projection from Pro Football Focus is an improvement, but probably not as much as most people would like.

14. Jacksonville Jaguars (6-10)

This offseason the Jaguars added several players who could play key roles on the team including Leonard Fournette, A.J. Bouye and Calais Campbell. The only interior defenders with more pressures than Campbell in the PFF era are J.J. Watt and Ndamukong Suh. If this team can take advantage of their new talent and Blake Bortles plays more like he did in 2015 than 2016, this team will have their best season in years. However, with Bortles’ inconsistency, it’s hard to project them to win too many more games than they had been the last few years.

PFF’s projection has the Jaguars doubling their win total from 2016, which is a massive swing, but it’s also easy to have a massive swing and double your win total when you only won three games in the season prior.

I’m still not quite sure what I expect the Jaguars to do, but the 6-10 range feels about right based on what we know right now. That was my projection last season, but my big question was the defense (the pass rush) and I thought the offense would carry the team. Obviously the complete reverse happened and this year I expect the defense to carry and the offense to struggle early.

I think PFF is pretty spot on with their assessment however, as it’s really tough to project what the Jaguars are going to do because you don’t know what Bortles you’re going to get. Based on how we think the Jaguars are going to play offensively, I wouldn’t expect the 2015 version because a lot of that was volume passing. Perhaps something in-between, with less crippling turnovers would be ideal?

Either way, I definitely think the Jaguars improve from their 3-13 record last season, the big question is just what is their peak?