Jacksonville Jaguars vs. Chicago Bears: Friday Fact or Fiction
By Daniel Lago
With a week to reflect on a close win against the Indianapolis Colts in London, the Jacksonville Jaguars head to Chicago in another must-win game if they want to stay relevant.
The Jacksonville Jaguars had a tough slate to start the season, but you’d be hard pressed to find many fans who were expecting the team to be in dire straits with a 1-3 record coming out of the bye.
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Big picture, the 1-3 record isn’t the end of the world given the Jaguars have played two perennial playoff contenders (the Packers and the Ravens) and a team that routinely obliterates them on the west coast (the Chargers and Philip Rivers). What’s more concerning than the record is the way the Jaguars are losing (or even winning) these games. They’ve been uncharacteristically reckless with penalties, unable to adapt to anything the opposing team is doing over the course of the game, and completely helpless at times on offense. Blake Bortles has regressed to the point where more and more people are starting to write him off entirely, and nobody expects Gus Bradley to come back as the head coach in 2017.
In order to rebuild the perception they are a team on the rise, the Jaguars have to string together some wins, starting with the Chicago Bears this Sunday. Sitting at 1-4, the Bears are a team with serious questions at the quarterback position, injuries throughout the defensive line, and a truly awful secondary. In theory this should be a game where the Jaguars should win out due to pure talent, but that’s not how this team operates.
So what’s going to actually happen this Sunday when the Jaguars take the field at a frigid Soldier Field? Are they going to pull off something they haven’t done very often during Gus Bradley’s tenure – win consecutive games? Click ahead to see my “rock solid” predictions: