New England Patriots vs. Jacksonville Jaguars

The Breakdown

Of all the football facets the Jacksonville Jaguars will be sold short leading up to their showdown in New England, resilience will not be one of them.

With two and a half minutes remaining, needing a field goal to lead, David Garrard proved worthy of comparison to his upcoming counterpart.

The Jags had just blown the largest fourth quarter lead (18) in playoff history, and were in need of about 25-30 yards to get into Josh Scobee’s range. On the most critical play of his season, a fourth and two, Garrard dropped back to pass. The double threat turned out to be the deciding factor, as he scrambled deep into Pittsburgh territory.

A few subjects can be taken from this game and applied to this Saturday’s divisional matchup. For one, the Jaguars stay disciplined. They committed only six penalties, and were among the five least penalized teams in football, so don’t expect them to hurt themselves.

Jacksonville will need to construct a game plan that puts both the defensive line and the secondary of the Patriots on their heels. The Jags get a bit of a breather this week after defeating Pittsburgh’s ruthless defense, which ranked third in both pass and rush stoppage. New England ranked tenth against the run and sixth against the pass.

Jacksonville should be very concerned about their secondary’s second half performance against the Steelers. They managed to eat Ben Roethlisberger alive in the first half, intercepting three of his passes. But he tossed it around at will to mount a comeback. This can be contributed to the differential in Jacksonville’s pass rush. In the first half, Roethlisberger went down five times. The Jaguars only mustered one sack in the second half, and the best secondary is a solid pass rush.

The Patriots and Jaguars stack up second and third respectively in the NFL in time of possession. Naturally, something has to give. New England’s short passing game rivals Jacksonville’s ground game in regards to clock management. Expect the Jaguars to hold the time of possession edge throughout the early stages, followed by a gradual shift as the Patriots will have a halftime lead. Jacksonville will have to use the pass and the Patriots will end up winning the time of possession battle.

If the Jaguars want to stick around, they must force the Patriots to resort to using Laurence Maroney. They can achieve this by pressuring Tom Brady early on (duh). Trust me, I’m going somewhere with this. By getting to Brady at the start, Jacksonville forces New England to attempt to push forward with Maroney. Without loading the box and clearly trying to stuff the run, the Jags can use delayed blitzes as a disguise and discourage New England’s rush efforts. This will force the Patriots to a pass heavy approach, making them more predictable, which is one large step on the way to defeating them.

As long as their offense is rolling like normal (as normal as a record-destroying offense may be called), New England will not have to worry about allowing solid yardage to the Jags’ two-headed backfield beast. Jacksonville could run for 200 yards and they would still not be able to keep up with the quick-hit scoring ability of the Patriots.

Patriots 28, Jaguars 17