How Doug Pederson counter-punched the Chargers right out of the playoffs

In this Super Wild-Card Weekend, the Jacksonville Jaguars overcame an atrocious first half for an incredible 31-30 comeback victory over the Los Angeles Chargers.

In the first half, Trevor Lawrence played some of the worst football of his entire career. His team was down 27-7, and he threw four interceptions and had a 24.5 rating through the first eight series.

Luckily in the NFL, it’s a game of two halves. In the second half, Lawrence threw three touchdowns and rallied from a massive deficit to win his very first playoff appearance.

Head coach Doug Pederson had this to say about his team’s resilience, “I mean, it’s everything. That’s just what I told them at halftime, it’s kind of like our season. We’ve put ourselves in a hole at times, and we’ve worked ourselves out of it at times. Just to have the resiliency and the fight and the desire and the ability to continue to play, because it could have easily gone the other way, and that’s what I’m so proud of these guys for. Everything is on the line, and they go out and get the job done.”

This wasn’t the first game of the season where Pederson rallied his team back from a deficit to a victory:

There were certain offensive tactics that allowed the Jaguars to begin controlling the ball through the air. Right before the half, Pederson and his staff noticed some key defensive assignments that they decided to attack, which began their epic comeback.

Let’s dive in and let the film tell the story!

Before the half.

(Syndication: Florida Times-Union)

In the first two quarters, Lawrence was held to only 10 completions for 77 yards and throwing four interceptions. One of the ways that the Chargers defense were able to suppress the Jaguars’ passing game was taking away Lawrence’s slot receivers.

So far this season, 15 of Lawrence’s 25 touchdowns this season have been to slot receivers, which is the third most slot touchdowns in the league, behind Josh Allen (20) and Patrick Mahomes (16).

Early in the game, the Chargers took away Christian Kirk, the Jaguars top receiver out of the game. Since 67.5% of his routes are from the slot, he had only one catch of six targets in the first half.

Kirk was running across the field and is considered the third receiver, and that is who the safety is picking up. The safety is considered a “robber”, because he is crashing down to pick up the receiver that is crossing the hash marks.

This was the same defense that the Chargers ran and so instead of continuing to target Kirk, Pederson instead decided to use him as a decoy to open up other receivers.

Exposing the robber.

(Syndication: Florida Times-Union)

Once the Jaguars discovered the intentions of the Chargers’ defense, which was to shut down the Jaguars’ slot receivers, the offense really started to open up.

Pederson started to run tempo, and it was all a part of the plan coming out of the locker room at halftime.

“I think one of them [halftime adjustments] was just we had to kind of go up-tempo and be on the ball a little bit more in the second half. When we got down so many scores there, three scores at least, and we just felt like we needed to get a spark and be up-tempo.”

This tactic was used to prevent to the defense from adjusting. In the first quarter, the Jaguars ran a nine-play drive that took three minutes and 31 seconds to only move 42 yards. Towards the end of the second quarter, on the Jaguars’ first scoring drive, they ran seven plays that lasted only one minute and 25 seconds. They were certainly speeding the game up.

A few plays later, after the first clip above, the Jaguars were in the red zone, and the Chargers were still in their two-high safety look. Pederson drew up a play where the third receiver running to the backside safety would fake a slant, and then cut up the seam.

On the Jaguars’ third touchdown, to put the game within 10 points, the offense once again exposed the backside safety using Kirk as a decoy. This time, it was Derwin James.

Zay Jones ran a deep over, and Kirk ran a deep curl route which held the backside safety underneath, leading to a busted coverage.

Before this call, the Jaguars ran back-to-back no huddle plays. This was the key to ensuring the coverage.

It was unclear why Chargers head coach Brandon Staley didn’t switch up his coverage calls after the first two touchdowns.

After the game Chargers Staley was asked is the Jaguars did anything differently in the second half, “No. They didn’t do anything different than they did in the first half. We gave up a big explosion for a touchdown, which hurt us. I don’t think we tackled as well in the second half. Like I said, there were a couple penalties that I think really hurt us.”

Fourth-quarter smash concepts.

(Syndication: Florida Times-Union)

Once the fourth quarter arrived, the Chargers were just running their base man coverages and no longer bracketing Kirk with zone coverage switches and bringing a safety down to help.

It was just old-fashioned one-on-one matchups. Just like what the Chargers have been running the majority of their season, but with Lawrence’s general success against man coverage, it was bound to get interesting.

With six minutes left in the game, the Jaguars started running smash concepts with Evan Engram and Zay Jones underneath to get the ball to their best receivers.

Then with only two minutes left in the game, on a second-and-3, Pederson called the exact smash concept as earlier, with Engram and Kirk to the right side this time.

Lawrence certainly had the underneath to Engram, but with Kirk already going five-for-five for 47 yards in the fourth quarter, it was better to go with the hot hand.

The Jaguars adjusted; the Chargers didn't.

[Corey Perrine/Florida Times-Union]
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Lawrence’s first half and second half against the Chargers was a similar reflection of his first two years in the NFL.

• First half: 1 TD, 4 INTs & -17.7% CPOE; second half: 3 TDs, 0 INT & +8.3% CPOE.

• First year: 3-14 record, 12 TDs, 17 INT, 71.9 rating; second year: 9-8 record, 25 TDs, 8 INT and 95.2 rating.

According to Next Gen Stats, before Saturday night, teams that lost the turnover battle by five were 0-26 in the postseason. The Jags made it 1-26. Pederson is now 5-1 in playoff games.

Pederson played a huge part in Lawrence’s and the Jaguars’ success on Sunday. He was aggressive on two separate occasions that allowed his team to trust themselves so they could execute. He made adjustments on the fly that allowed his quarterback to gain the confidence to continue throwing the ball in order to get back into the game. There aren’t many young quarterbacks that would be able to bounce back from such a disastrous first half.

Here is Pederson when asked about the decision-making process before going for the two-point conversion:

“There was never a doubt, never a doubt. I trust in the players, trust our decision, felt good about our call that we had. What it does is it – either a field goal wins or you’ve got to score a touchdown to win. And so you get in these moments – listen, you trust the players, and you want to win the football game. You want to do it for them. They battled their tails off, so there was no hesitation on that.”

There was never a doubt, and that is all you can ask for as a player. Pederson’s confidence never wavered, and even when it seemed like some of these games were out of reach, somehow the Jaguars would come back and make it a game.

That is why, like their safety Andrew Wingard would say, “It was always the Jags!”

Story originally appeared on Touchdown Wire