The 2020 NFL season is especially crucial for the Jacksonville Jaguars, who are only three years away from an AFC Championship Game appearance, but are also in the midst of a rebuilding event. Is Gardner Minshew really a franchise quarterback? Does Doug Marrone have what it takes to cross one of the youngest rosters of the NFL? Are the Jags rightly the chance to favorites around the no. 1 to choose in the 2021 concept? The questions abound.
With the season right around the corner, the answers will come soon enough. But if you just can not wait, now, we have decided to make some forecasts anyway. Here are three bold predictions regarding the Jaguars’ 2020 season:
1. DJ Chark will challenge Jimmy Smith’s receiving album
After an anonymous rookie season, Chark exploded in 2019 as Minshew’s favorite goal, trailing in 73 passes for 1,008 yards and eight touchdowns. Now imagine him playing a full 16 games, not switching between Minshew and Nick Foles several times throughout the year, and profiting from a re-abuse. New faces like Chris Thompson, a complete receiver from the backfield; and Laviska Shenault, a rough-and-tumble player, should at least garner some attention over Chark, and coordinator Jay Gruden’s high-efficiency approach would enable Minshew to find his way even more than before.
Jimmy Smith has Jackson’s all-time single-season receiving mark of 1,636 yards, set in 1999. Allen Robinson is the most recent Jag to come close to that record, hitting 1,400 yards in 2015. It would obviously take a monster season from Chark to approach similar totals, but after seeing how he clicked with Minshew in the stretch in 2019, why would anyone figure it out? Assuming that Jacksonville will play catch-up for much of 2020 (and the predictions that follow hint at our opinion there), that simply means more goals for Chark.
2. Yannick Ngakoue will not play a single snap for the Jaguars
This is not necessarily bold if you just listen to what Ngakoue said this offseason. The up-and-coming rusher does not want to be part of a long-term deal in Jacksonville, and he has spoken several times about a departure from the team that drafted him back in 2016. Heck, the man even got into a Twitter spell with the co- owner of the team, while requiring a trade. And yet, the Jags have apparently been reluctant to keep Ngakoue, who received the club’s franchise tag in February, or at least until an incredibly lucrative trade show comes their way.
What comes next? Now, because Ngakoue has refused to sign the tag, he is technically not under contract until 2020. That means, as the Jaguars’ own website has speculated, the defensive end may not play at all this season. In other words, he could pull off a Le’Veon Bell, sitting out to force the team’s hand – and likely get his wish, from a new team and new contract – next offseason. If that does not happen, then the Jags might just trade him for the trade date of the season, especially if they are a slow start and want to rid themselves of their definitive Jalen Ramsey level distraction. Somehow, the thinking here is that Ngakoue – probably one of the top players on the entire roster – has played all of his last game in Jacksonville.
3. The Jaguars win only two games
Sorry if this just gets worse, fans of Jags. This prediction has the greatest chance of seeing fools, because although Jacksonville is definitely rebuilding, there is plenty of young upside at some key spots – Minshew at QB, Leonard Fournette at RB, Chark and Shenault at WR, Tyler Eifert at TE, K’Lavon Chaisson at DE, CJ Henderson at CB – for the team of Doug Marrone to surprise and set up a fight in the ever-wide open AFC South.
It’s just hard to see them cracking the playoff picture with some of the holes in their lineup, and if things go downhill, they’ll probably go down hard. Who protects Minshew going forward? (And that is as he protects himself outside the box.) What version of Fournette do they get? Who in the world defends the pass when Henderson is not on speed?
This team lost six of its last eight games in 2019, when the Jags finished 6-10, and the 2020 schedule does not look particularly forgiving. Jacksonville will receive three divisional matchups in its first six weeks of this season, with the Bengals, Lions and Dolphins serving as the other three opponents. Just take a look at her last 10 games, which follow her bycatch:
Yikes. Let’s face it, just for fun, the Jags beat both the Colts and Texans in their first six weeks. Are we really running on a whip of those two series? And then you have the Bears, Browns, Chargers, Packers, Ravens, Steelers and Vikings – seven different teams that all figure to speak on a.) An elite defense, b.) Legitimate playoff hop, or c. Both. Due to some sort of weird rise from Minshew and his very supportive cast on opposite sides of the ball, it seems unreasonable to expect the Jags to win more than a few of those matchups, if that.
