Jacksonville Jaguars fans beginning to doubt Trevor Lawrence
By Jeff Tice
Jacksonville Jaguars QB Trevor Lawrence hasn’t had that ‘big’ win yet
If you were to chart Lawrence’s overall career trajectory, is his overall arrow still pointing up despite some wiggles? Most would say yes. But, when taking a wholistic view, there is one aspect of his career to date that gets ignored.
Those critical of ’16’ often focus on specifics like lack of awareness, accuracy issues, ball security, etc., and how those issues typically lead to losses. However, most fans understand growing pains. The problem is, there is a piece of the overall puzzle that is missing. If that piece were present, those pains would be a lot more tolerable.
The missing piece is the “wow” game.
Lawrence has just completed his 22nd NFL start. In those 22 games, he has had a handful of good games. But, arguably, not one of those 22 games had fans walking away saying, “wow.” Sure, there were good, you might even say excellent, games such as the Chargers and Colts from this year.
But, to this point, Trevor Lawrence has had only two 300-yard passing games in his career. He has had only three games with a rating over 100.0, none of those games featured 300 yards of passing, and collectively they averaged around 7.0 yards per pass. Those are more like “game manager” types of numbers.
By comparison, within his first 22 starts, Patrick Mahomes had 13 300-yard passing games, plus a couple of 400-yard games. Wow. In one of those 400-yarders, his 12th start against the Rams, he threw for six touchdowns! Wow!! In his third start ever, he was 23-28 for 328 yards and six touchdowns and a 155 rating against the Steelers. WOW!!!
Justin Herbert had 11 300-yard passing games within his first 22 starts. He had ten games with over a 100 rating. Again, Trevor Lawrence has three. Herbert’s highest rating during his first 22 starts came in his third game against Tampa Bay. He only threw for 290 yards with three touchdowns and an average of 12 yards per attempt that day for a rating of 138.0. Jaw-dropping, right? In his 18th start, Herbert beat the Chiefs with four touchdowns and a 125 rating! *chef kiss*
Again, Lawrence’s highest rating was against the Colts. He was 25-30 for 235 yards and two touchdowns for a 122 rating. That rating looks similar to Herbert’s win against the Chiefs. But Lawrence averaged eight yards per attempt and only threw two touchdowns versus Herbert’s four. Pretty good, but “wow”? It doesn’t feel that way.