Gene Frenette: Jaguars choking away AFC South by losing to Titans a tough memory to forget

NASHVILLE — On the sideline at the 40-yard line, the final seconds ticked away as quarterback Trevor Lawrence and receiver Zay Jones stood next to each other, undoubtedly seething in disbelief.

“That’d be a good way to describe it,” said Jones.

In the postgame locker room, the shellshocked Jacksonville Jaguars did a spot-on impersonation of a football morgue.

'Starts with me': Doug Pederson takes blame for loss to Titans, Jaguars missing playoffs

Shirtless linebacker Foye Oluokun sat down at his locker and stared at the ground for several minutes.

A moody Rayshawn Jenkins declined to answer questions, walking away without a passing glance.

One player uttered an F bomb of frustration so loudly, it could probably be heard 11 miles away at the Grand Ole Opry.

None of the Jaguars saw this season ending with such a profound gut punch. You don’t absorb a 28-20 defeat to the hated AFC South rival Tennessee Titans, which will go down unequivocally as the worst regular-season loss in Jaguars history, and just write it off like nothing happened.

This was the worst kind of reality check for Jacksonville’s franchise. How does it come to grips with being 8-3 and seemingly on cruise control for another division championship, only to see it evaporate with five losses in the last six games?

The Jaguars (9-8) had everything to play for, yet delivered another stink bomb of a game that handed the AFC South title to the Houston Texans.

Somebody put into words how the Jaguars could put on such a pathetic, inexcusable, abominable, embarrassing performance with so much at stake.

“It’s going to be a year everybody looks back on their career and realize you had a bunch of guys from top to bottom that could do it,” said safety Andre Cisco. “We had an opportunity to do it today. You get into the playoffs and anything can happen. We didn’t give ourselves that chance.”

Lawrence, as much as anyone, knows what’s coming next. A mountain of regret.

“It hasn't even really set in yet that, you know, we're done,” said Lawrence, who returned after sitting out his first NFL game last week with a shoulder sprain. “I'm not gonna be playing anymore this year, so it's gonna be a long, long offseason.”

A game of inches

As tortuous as it was to let the hated Titans send them into offseason misery, the same can be said of how the Jaguars couldn’t move the ball one lousy yard to possibly tie the game.

Following a 6-yard completion to Jones, who stretched the ball out to try and touch the end zone pylon, the Jaguars still had a third-and-goal at the 1 with 7:18 remaining, down 28-20.

So close to a touchdown, the Jaguars never got in. A third-down rollout by Lawrence went awry as running back Travis Etienne was too well covered, so he threw it away.

On fourth down, Lawrence vetoed the play sent in. He instead used his long right arm to reach over the top on a TD attempt, where his length succeeded many times before.

But not in this instance. With center Luke Fortner getting pushed back by defensive tackle Keondre Coburn, the penetration wasn’t enough for Lawrence to get the ball over the plane.

“Obviously, he had success in the past on it, just came up inches short,” said Pederson. “But you can’t fault him for trying to make a play.”

Afterward, it was hard to tell whether No. 16 lamented not scoring or overriding the play call.

“Maybe that situation, you just let the play ride and hope you get in and, and let the guys up front do their job and the running backs and all that,” said Lawrence. “And, you know, don't try to take that into my own hands, you know.

“That's something I gotta watch it and make that decision, but it's done now. I made the decision and they trust me with those things and, um, didn't work.”

Head coach Doug Pederson did the right thing by eschewing the field goal, correctly figuring that failure would still leave the Titans backed up to their own end zone.

Just force a three-and-out and the Jaguars’ offense would be back in business. What Pederson didn’t count on was Davon Hamilton jumping offsides before the next snap, giving Tennessee some breathing room to better move the chains.

The Titans did just that, getting three first downs. That burned nearly five minutes off the clock, forced the Jaguars to exhaust their last two timeouts and made it easier for the Titans’ defense to put an end to their season.

Twice in the last seven minutes, the Jaguars had chances to undo their own mess and maybe pull of a remarkable comeback.

But as was the case in late-season losses to the Cincinnati Bengals, Cleveland Browns and Baltimore Ravens, the Jaguars always seem to come up short in game-defining moments.

Defense let Henry run wild

If there was one thing imperative for the Jaguars to get done to bring home another AFC South title, it was make sure their all-time nemesis, Derrick Henry, didn’t trample all over the defense again.

Yet just three days after his 30th birthday, in what sure looks like his last game as a Tennessee Titan, the Yulee High product stuck the biggest dagger yet in his hometown NFL team.

Despite numerous attempts by Mike Caldwell’s unit to load the box, sometimes with eight or nine defenders, Henry still took the heart right out of the Jaguars.

The 247-pound back, often stymied this season because of a blocking-challenged offensive line, found plenty of daylight with four runs of 12-plus yards.

“It’s unacceptable,” said Cisco. “That’s not who we are. It hasn’t been who we were all year.”

At no time did Henry render the Jaguars more powerless than on the second play of the third quarter, bursting through a hole so wide that Jenkins was the only defender who could touch him. He rambled 69 yards to the Jaguars’ 4, setting up a Deandre Hopkins TD catch that extended the Titans’ lead to 28-13.

Over and over, the Jaguars told themselves to not let Henry beat them and he did it again, rushing for 153 yards on 19 carries.

When Josh Allen was asked if it was frustrating to stack the box with that many defenders and still allow Henry to run wild, the loquacious Jaguars outside linebacker replied: “Yes.”

Nobody felt worse about Henry having his best output of the season, by over 30 yards no less, than linebacker Foye Oluokun, who fell short in his bid for a three-peat as the NFL’s leading tackler.

“We got to be accountable, hold our gaps, 11 as 1 on defense,” said Oluokun. “We’ll go into the offseason and that’ll be the main focal point, getting off blocks for linebackers, holding gaps for the defensive linemen.

“We all knew what they were going to do. Every play is life and death of its own. We did not own our plays.”

Jaguars choke season away

It cannot be overstated how galling of an outcome this will be for the Jaguars and the fan base in the coming days, weeks, months and even years.

Not quite the devastation of losing those three AFC Championship games, including on home soil to the Titans in 1999, but this is a heartbreaking interruption of Pederson’s two-year tenure.

After rallying to win the last five games in 2022 to reach the playoffs, the Jaguars just did the opposite.

They went one-and-done. They melted down in a manner nobody saw coming when they were 8-3 and the Thanksgiving leftovers were just about gone.

“I’m frustrated, I’m disappointed, I’m mad, angry,” said Pederson. “My heart hurts, obviously for the players and coaches involved. They’ve worked their tails off. Today’s game was sort of our season in a nutshell really.

“The mistakes, the penalties, the turnovers, the missed tackles. Those were all the things that hurt us down the stretch.”

The Jaguars were mostly stumped for answers as to why this season ended in stark contrast to 2022. They brought back all the significant pieces of the band, adding a deep receiving threat in Calvin Ridley, and everything ultimately fell to pieces.

Allen talked about the difference being that this Jaguars’ team lacked a certain fire, determination and desire. They kept waiting for a spark and “it never got lit.”

Pederson took Allen’s point another step further, pointedly adding: “I think that’s accurate. But the thing is, you can’t sit around and wait for a spark. You got to be the spark right? That’s either me being it, or Josh being it, or Trevor being it or something when that other team catches fire.”

As with most of December, Pederson’s team waited, and waited, and waited for a turnaround that never came.

Looking back on the last six miserable weeks, safety Andrew Wingard thought long and hard about how the 2023 Jaguars lost their way.

“Yeah, for sure, down the stretch it was kind of a defensive. … not really just being us and going and playing,” said Wingard. “That was one of the main things down the stretch.

“Just thinking, just listening to you guys, listening to the media, doing this, doing that, thinking about things that aren’t relevant that we can’t control. … I think it trickled into bad ball.”

There’s no need for a coroner to come in and determine the cause of death of the Jaguars season. It was asphyxiation.

The Jaguars choked it away.

Gfrenette@jacksonville.com: (904) 359-4540 

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Historic loss: Jaguars blowing division title, playoffs to Titans inexcusable