Jacksonville Jaguars: 3 stats that defined loss to Broncos

2. The Jacksonville Jaguars once again didn’t use James Robinson.

One of the stats that stood out the most in the Jaguars’ Week 1 loss to the Houston Texans was the carries or lack thereof running James Robinson got. The former Redbird got a measly six rushes despite the fact that he showed in 2020 that he can carry a big workload. To add insult to injury, Carlos Hyde got more carries than Robinson.

The case could be made that the Jags abandoned the run in the season opener because they fell behind and still had a shot at winning the games. For that reason, it was reasonable to expect Jacksonville to have a more balanced game plan and run the ball more often in Week 2. But it wasn’t meant to be. Robinson surely ran the all more times (16), but not enough to carry the team on his shoulders. Although the second-year running back average 4.2 yards per carry, the Jags’ stopped feeding him the ball.

On Monday, head coach Urban Meyer had a sitdown with the local media, and implied that the Jags moved away from the run because “they were trying to get back in the game”. Maybe offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell will finally find the right balance of running and passing plays in Week 3 but he needs to make it a priority to give Robinson the ball.

The silver lining is that the Illinois State product made history against Denver. He is one of 10 players in NFL history to record at least 50 scrimmage yards in each of their first 16 career games.