Jacksonville Jaguars: Same offense yields different result

Cody Kessler led the same Jacksonville Jaguars offense to victory over Indianapolis, so how did that happen?

The Jacksonville Jaguars made two changes in the offense prior to their Week 13 game against the Indianapolis Colts. Blake Bortles was benched in favor of Cody Kessler and Nathaniel Hackett was fired as the offensive coordinator. Expectations were running wild as to what the Scott Milanovich would change in the Jaguars offensive scheme.

After all, Milanovich spent several years in the pass happy Canadian Football League. Many wondered how his experience would be translated into the Jaguars scheme. There was nothing different about the offense outside of the quarterback position, except Andrew Norwell and Leonard Fournette were missing from the active roster.

Norwell became the newest addition to the injured reserve list. Fournette sat out because of his antics in Buffalo that the NFL took a strong stand against with a one-game suspension. Honestly, Kessler was thrown into the fire without any help.

In fact, Kessler had an average but good game. He completed 18 of 24 passes for 150 yards. His quarterback rating was 90.6 for the game and he did not have any turnovers. Kessler also seemed to push the ball down field at least slightly more, but the lack of turnovers, as opposed to two in Week 12, were most telling.

Of course, the Jaguars defense played a huge role in the win on Sunday. They made three gigantic stops on fourth down. The defense was the difference in winning on Sunday.

Will the Jaguars be able to lean on the defense again throughout the rest of the season? Why not — they did in 2017. After all, there will not be a major overhaul of this offense now, but there might be some tweaks here and there.

Perhaps Milanovich will stretch out the linemen splits on the line of scrimmage. This would make the path to the quarterback longer for the opposing linemen. Hopefully, they will scrap the power formations for more spread formations.

There is nothing more frustrating than trying to run the ball into an eight man box with six blockers. It’s no secret how decimated the Jaguars offensive line is, so why do the same thing expecting different results? This is a short week for the Jaguars. They travel to Tennessee for a Thursday night clash with the Titans.