PENALTIES A MAJOR CONCERN FOR JAGUARS IN WEEK 3

Lee Winder | Flickr

The Jaguars will need to play much cleaner football to win in week three and beyond. 

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The Jaguars split their first two contests in 2017, and in doing so looked like two different teams. The first, a run heavy, physically dominant team that man handled the Texans; the second, an incompetent offense and a tired defense that gave up 31 second half points to the Titans. The truth of who the Jaguars in are in 2017 is somewhere in between the two performances, but where they fall in that spectrum is not yet know. The Jaguars passing attack isn't going to win them m(any) games and the team will struggle to sustain long drives on the offensive side of the ball.

While the two performances were on extreme opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of the final result, there was one common denominator: Penalties

For a team that will struggle to put up points, avoiding mental mistakes is a necessity. To this point in the season the Jaguars haven't been able to avoid mental mistakes prior to or during plays. The team has 20 total penalties in 2017 - 10 in each performance so far. They have the second most penalties and the second most penalty yards in the NFL through two weeks. Piling up an average over 90 penalty yards a game, the Jaguars are costing themselves huge chunks of yardage.

Some penalties are more acceptable than others. Any coach would rather see an effort penalty than a pre snap mental mistake. The Jaguars have seen plenty of both variety of mistakes.

In coverage AJ Bouye has been called for four penalties, each resulting in a first down for Jaguars opponents. 

Also on the defensive side of the ball we've seen two roughing the passer calls and one unnecessary roughness call. These are the type of effort plays that coaches can live with, but they hurt the team none the less. All of these penalties extended offensive drives for the Jaguars opponent and one negated a Myles Jack interception.

The offensive line has been called for 3 penalties so far, each of which has resulted in the Jaguars putrid passing offense being forced to try move the ball through the air - the results have not been pretty. 

The bottom line is the Jaguars don't have a good enough offense to be put behind the chains and the defense can't commit penalties because of the lack of offensive production. If the defense gives up any easy points due to penalties it makes the Jaguars chances of achieving a win considerably lower. This team must tighten up if they hope to beat the Ravens in London this Sunday.