James Robinson could be key to the Jaguars offense going forward

A week ago a lot of Jacksonville Jaguars fans were still lamenting the release of former first round pick Leonard Fournette, wondering what in the heck the team would do at the running back position. It’s no secret that I was not a fan of Fournette on the field and thought he was an aggressively medium back, but even I was a bit puzzled by his straight up release by the Jaguars.

After Week 1 however, we have more of an idea of why the team felt comfortable doing so. James Robinson was a name that kept coming up when I was asking people about training camp, trying to get an idea for some of the new blood to keep an eye on, and he showed why his name was a constant against the Indianapolis Colts.

Robinson hurdled, set records, but most importantly it never felt like there was a dead play when he was handed the rock.

It was a breath of fresh air seeing the running back see the hole, hit the hole with power and not dance around in the backfield. Quite a few of the runs Robinson had we would joke that Founette would have ran right up the guard’s backside instead of accelerating through the window given, like Robinson did.

I’m not ready to crown Robinson a stud UDFA find yet, however he did look promising, but he’s going to be a key cog to Jay Gruden’s offense going forward. The Colts started to key on Robinson in the second half, which opened up a lot of the passing game for Gardner Minshew, which is something we didn’t see much of last season with Fournette and the previous offensive system.

The Denver Broncos on Monday Night Football had some success with play-action against the stout Tennessee Titans defense, although they lost, it should give the Jaguars some ideas of what to game plan for on Sunday in Nashville. It’s going to start with getting Robinson going early and then exploiting the play-action and the eventual shots down the field.