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Did Derrick Henry kill the Jacksonville Jaguars franchise?

By Will Lomas

NASHVILLE, TN - NOVEMBER 24: Derrick Henry #22 of the Tennessee Titans runs for a touchdown in the second half and stiff arms Jarrod Wilson #26 of the Jacksonville Jaguars at Nissan Stadium on November 24, 2019 in Nashville, Tennessee. The Titans defeated the Jaguars 42-20. (Photo by Wesley Hitt/Getty Images)
NASHVILLE, TN - NOVEMBER 24: Derrick Henry #22 of the Tennessee Titans runs for a touchdown in the second half and stiff arms Jarrod Wilson #26 of the Jacksonville Jaguars at Nissan Stadium on November 24, 2019 in Nashville, Tennessee. The Titans defeated the Jaguars 42-20. (Photo by Wesley Hitt/Getty Images) /
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(Photo by Abbie Parr/Getty Images)
(Photo by Abbie Parr/Getty Images) /

Cracks start to show

Now the Jacksonville Jaguars are heading into the 2018 season with all of this momentum and it had gotten to the point where USA Today predicted the Jaguars to end up as the #1 seed in the AFC ahead of the New England Patriots with a 12-4 record. (Also a good time to tell you that USA Today not being high on the Titans here is probably a good thing for Tennessee.)

But, that isn’t what happened. In fact, the Jaguars didn’t even get half as many wins as they were projected finishing at just 5-11.

So what happened? How did Jacksonville just fall off of a cliff? Well, the descent took a month to happen, but when it happened it was a steep fall.

After four games the Jaguars were 3-1 with their one loss belonging to the Tennessee Titans who again road the running game to a win because Marcus Mariota was suffering from a rash of injuries again.

Then then the Jaguars lost seven straight and finished the season on a 2-10 run. During that stretch, they scored more than 20 points twice.

Remember that decision to keep Bortles and to pass on Lamar Jackson to take Taven Bryan? Well, Jackson was developing into one of the most difficult players in the NFL to stop and Taven Bryan had 1 sack and 20 tackles.

The Jaguars defense was fed up with carrying an offense that wouldn’t do their share of the work, and the franchise took this to heart and tried to go after a quarterback who was at least expected to raise the low bar in place.

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