Jaguars S Andrew Wingard on starting vs. Ravens: ‘Cool, I like football’

Trevor Lawrence and the offense played a huge role in the Jacksonville Jaguars’ 28-27 win over the Baltimore Ravens but there are also a handful of defensive players that made the upset possible. In the fourth quarter and down 19-17, safety Andrew Wingard dislodged the ball from running back Gus Edwards and cornerback Tyson Campbell ended up scooping it. The Jags went on to score 10 points and Dewey was a big reason they were able to upset the Ravens.

Wingard told Mia O’Brien of 1010 XL after the game that the coaching staff told him Monday he would be starting against the Ravens.

“I showed up Monday and they say, ‘hey, Dewey, you’re playing”, so I was like ‘Alright, cool, I love playing football”, Dewey said. “But now we simplified it, had a couple personnel groups played really three or four calls really the whole game and when you can read and react and play fast not be thinking, you get good results”.

To contain Lamar Jackson and the Baltimore Ravens’ offense, the Jacksonville Jaguars often had three safeties on the field. That meant that Wingard, who hadn’t had many defensive snaps this season ended up playing more than usual.

Winegard played a season-high 47 snaps and logged three total tackles and a forced fumble. His 87.8 Pro Football Focus overall grade was the highest among Jaguars players in Week 12. Here’s his whole exchange with O’Brien.

Turnovers had a role in the Jaguars beating the Ravens in Week 12

The Jaguars forced two fumbles against the Ravens, one by Wingard and one by defensive tackle DaVon Hamilton early in the second quarter but you could make the case that the former had the bigger impact of the two.

Either way, Wingard says that he and his teammates often discuss the importance of forcing turnovers.

“Turnovers, we always preach, same takeaways, it’s hard to stop the best players in the league. You’ve got to be able to turn the field over and give it back to the offense and those were big and we preach it every day. Coach [Bob] Sutton has a slide up every day, it says ‘think takeaways’ so I saw him bust out and just thought, ‘maybe I’ll punch it from behind and see what happens’. It worked out”, Wingard said.

As Wingard said, creating turnovers is hard and it isn’t a sustainable way to win football games. That’s why his forced fumble ended up being so big. At the time, it didn’t seem like the Jags were going to be able to come back. Although the offense had just scored a touchdown, they had struggled to move the ball for most of the game while the defense had a hard time containing Lamar Jackson.

But in the end, both the offense and the defense came through and Wingard’s fumble provided a spark that helped the Jaguars beat the Ravens.