Jaguars Have An Offense, Too...

Guess what? The Jacksonville Jaguars have an offense as well as a defense.

Just wanted to make sure that everyone was aware of that.

And not just any offense, as it may surprise many that they have the fifth-ranked offense in the National Football League, featuring the top rushing offense in all of professional football - yet all anyone wants to talk about is the Jaguars' defense.

Maybe that was where the Pittsburgh Steelers went wrong.

Bortles is dangerous with his feet

Let's put to rest the idea that the Pittsburgh Steelers were "looking past" the Jaguars and were instead pining for a rematch with the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship Game, because the Steelers' advanced scouting department and the coaching staff had a proper game plan in place but, as is typical for Mike Tomlin and his staff, they fell apart when things started going wrong for them...

...which started with their inability to stop the run, then mixed in a few turnovers and some really poor play calling - all of which gave the Jaguars excellent field position. And because they lost the game, no one really cares that they put together four touchdown drives of 75 yards or more to climb back into the game.

The aforementioned inability to stop the Jaguars running game was the real bitch-kitty for the Steelers, because just when it appeared that they were going to turn the tides and perhaps even tie the game midway through the final frame, the Jaguars put the game away with a five minute drive highlighted by quarterback Blaine Bortles working the play action and consistently burning the Steelers pass defense using his running backs in the pattern.

No, the Steelers were not looking past the Jaguars - they did something even worse: They simply did not respect Jacksonville's offense.

Bortles has one less 300 yard passing games than Tom Brady - 4 to 5 - and the reason he doesn't have more than that is that the Jaguars are so numerically balanced that they don't need him to - not when Bortles can use the second best starting position in the entire league thanks to a larcenist defense and very good special teams, not to mention the fact that he can turn and hand the ball to Leonard Fournette.

On offense, the Jaguars ran 527 passing plays and 527 running plays. They don't turn the ball over. They are second in the league in red zone scoring. All of these things make them very dangerous, yet all you hear from players on other teams is that Bortles isn't fit to be an NFL quarterback.

"He's trash" the Texans' Jadeveon Clowney stated after Bortles and the Jags mopped the floor with Houston in a week 15 matchup, which was a week after Seattle safety Earl Thomas referred to Bortles as a "sub par quarterback" in the wake of the Seahawks' season-killing loss to the Jaguars the week before. Both players mouthed off as they dejectedly sat in front of their lockers, trying to make sense of how they allowed the trashy, sub par quarterback to beat them, and to do it soundly.

A lot of people would look at the Jaguars' schedule and and have their "A-ha" moment as they played one of the easiest schedules in the league, some may simply say that Jacksonville's defense bailed them out time and again and still others would chalk it all up to a mediocre quarterback hitting a rare hot streak...

...and all of those things may be true, but it is no reason to dismiss and disrespect Bortles and, as a result, feel that the Jacksonville offense isn't a reason to explain how they have gotten to the AFC Championship Game. As Pittsburgh found out last week, you get what you deserve when you do that.

We all know that Patriots' head ball coach Bill Belichick would never allow his coaches and players to lapse into that trap - hell, if the Patriots were facing Foxborough High he'd build up their team to be the greatest thing in football since his Giants' defenses in the mid-90's and the turn of the century Rams' "Greatest Show on Turf".

What the Jaguars do best is to run the ball, so concentrating on stopping the run, setting the edge and shadowing Bortles - who has proven that his best attribute may be his athleticism, and who was targeted in the 2014 Draft but didn't drop to the second round - is most assuredly the game plan.

Isn't that always the game plan in New England?  It worked like a charm against the Tennessee Titans in the divisional round, and the Jaguars present a similar structure.