The Jaguars had some questionable decisions on Sunday. Head coach Doug Marrone is the man in charge of all these calls. The Jaguars rarely utilized Corey Grant and T.J Yeldon in the second half. Instead, they chose to attempt to run clock with Leonard Fournette which did not bold well as Fournette kept getting stuffed repeatedly. Another questionable call was at the end of the 1st half with 55 seconds left on the clock and two timeouts, Marrone elected to kneel the ball and head into the locker room with the lead.
Here is what Marrone had to say about his decision.
“I thought for what they do coverage-wise and what we had to do, and we had the lead and they had just scored,” Marrone said, via Charean Williams of ProFootballTalk. “I just didn’t want to put ourselves in a position [for something negative]. I wanted to get in leading at halftime. I didn’t think it was a great situation that we had been great at during the year. I thought the risk and reward for us at that moment in time was let’s go in and make our adjustments. Let’s get ourselves going, and let’s take this lead into halftime. That is exactly how I thought. Right or wrong.”
My only problem is with this decision is that you are playing Bill Belichick and Tom Brady. You need to take advantage of each and every opportunity you have to try to put up points and extend a lead against Brady and the Patriots. If the Jaguars could have gotten 3 points to end that half, the Jags would have been down only 1 point and were in range at the end of the game to attempt a game-winning field goal. Instead, they were down 4 and were forced to go for it on fourth in which they failed.
Marrone and the Jaguars have another decision looming soon as they have to decide if they want to stick with Blake Bortles who is holding back the offense as well as the team.