The hottest current streak in the National Football League has been a journey in every sense; five wins, played out in five stadiums, across four cities, in two countries and with a two-week European trek thrown in.
The Jacksonville Jaguars are the proud and perhaps surprising owners of the stretch, surprising only if you haven’t been paying close enough attention through their perfect October.
And if further proof was needed that this NFL season is moving at warp speed, it is the pace with which Trevor Lawrence and Co., looking shaky after a dispiriting opening three games, have come surging back with confidence and clarity.
Jacksonville is the most in-form team in the NFL — that much is borne out by the raw numbers. No other group has won more than three in a row currently, as pro football’s delightful unpredictability resounds once more.
But could it be that the Jaguars are also one of the league’s very best?
“We’re still not the best team in the league,” said Lawrence, a comment that, as we will later see, was very much in keeping with the group’s “don’t look at us” way of going about things. “We’ve still got more out there for us,” he added. “That’s all we know.”
We’ll take his word for it, for now, but don’t sleep on Jacksonville, which may not be as far away from the top of the NFL tree and potential Super Bowl contention as you — or they — might think.
In isolation, none of the five-pack of victories come leaping off the page with a screeching demand to be noticed, but all have served to forge a certain identity for Doug Pederson’s team. Sunday’s 20-10 win over the Pittsburgh Steelers was no different.
For all the aesthetic excellence of Lawrence’s hairdo, this is not a team trying to be pretty. So many of the things that have gone right recently have stemmed from gnarled and unheralded work on the defensive side of the ball.
Indeed, “gritty not pretty” is one of the catchphrases the Jaguars are living by, and it is working. At 6-2, they are a mile ahead in the AFC South and with every reason to start looking at higher ambitions. That record is enough to equal those of the Kansas City Chiefs, the Miami Dolphins and the Baltimore Ravens, all of whom had at least one October hiccup loud enough to be considered a fully-fledged burp.
What Pederson has done is empower his locker room to a point of mental liberation, no easy task amid the grueling slog-sprint of an NFL campaign.
“We’re human, we’re just like everyone else,” defensive back Andrew Wingard, who deputized admirably for injured safety Andre Cisco, told reporters. “We have those doubts, we have those fears, we have those insecurities. But when you have all the guys together and you feel like you’re part of something it … allows you to just go and play free.”
Jacksonville has been all about finding motivation in different ways. While the Steelers got flustered during the week after Lawrence dared to call the Terrible Towel a “little towel” — to be clear here, it is a little towel, despite its historic significance and beloved standing — Jacksonville pounded upon bulletin board material provided by George Pickens‘ jibe that it had a “hope” defense.
That defense held the Steelers to zero first downs in the opening quarter and was miserly throughout, meaning that when Lawrence and company struggled to get going and coughed up three offensive turnovers the end result was still a resounding win.
The way things work in the NFL is that ducking under the radar can only happen for so long,
“I’m the last person to want to create sound waves for everybody else to feel us,” tight end Evan Engram said. “We have to continue to worry about ourselves. That’s what got us to this point, not trying to prove other people wrong, doubters or whatever. We don’t really care about that.”
If the offense gets things together, that’s when Jacksonville could really start to pose a threat. Remember, this is the point of last season when the team started to click, eventually overhauling a massive divisional deficit to the Tennessee Titans, then a 27-point hole against the Los Angeles Chargers in the postseason, before falling to the Chiefs.
The next three weeks will be telling. The San Francisco 49ers head to northeastern Florida next week with the 49ers coming off three straight defeats. The Jaguars follow that with a pair of divisional games, including an opportunity to overturn the upset loss to the Houston Texans that actually seems to have served as a wake-up call in Week 3.
Talking of waking up, the rest of the AFC can’t sleep on the Jaguars. Their win streak is hot, their confidence is high, and Lawrence and his offense are yet to hit full stride. Five wins down, and there are still enough things to work on to suggest that there is plenty more to come.
