JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — It’s not supposed to feel this way when the Jacksonville Jaguars close up shop for the season.
The ache is surely familiar, as the callouses from previous years never hold up their end of the bargain. You’d think each soul-sucking reminder of the past would make the present pain a bit easier to withstand, but even those well-worn memories couldn’t soften such a sharp blow.
So when the Jaguars fell Sunday to the Buffalo Bills 27-24 at EverBank Stadium, they bared their scars, wore their frustration on their sullen expressions and about-faced. The Jags retreated into the offseason while internally spinning through their miscues like an unrelenting roulette wheel that’s captured their spirit.
They cleared out of the locker room early, sauntering through the stadium tunnel like zombies.
It was all still so fresh.
“It will take a little bit of time,” Jaguars coach Liam Coen said. “I wasn’t 100 percent sure what to say to those guys in there because you don’t really plan for what you’re going to say after the season ends.”
The 40-year-old Coen became the first rookie coach in history to turn a four-win team into a 13-win squad. His message after each victory was roundly celebrated in Jacksonville and admired by his peers around the NFL. He routinely exploded through those locker room doors with the exuberance of a high school coach.
The revelry was always genuine, which in turn made the emptiness of Sunday feel as real as any challenge a game can present. Defensive leader Josh Hines-Allen, who tallied a third-quarter sack of Bills quarterback Josh Allen, ducked out of the locker room earlier than usual because it got too emotional.
“This was one of the first times I felt surrounded by guys who wanted to be great, guys who sacrificed their bodies, guy who wanted greatness from their teammates,” Hines-Allen said. “It was a lot of fun to be around that.”
Hines-Allen instead escaped to the team meeting room where Coen addressed the media and spoke of love and pride and admiration for his roster. Coen mentioned the culture and the process and all that went into the organization’s fifth division title — an undeniable success after two years out of the playoffs.
“I hope we’ve established a standard of competing at a high level, of mental and physical toughness, of putting the team first,” Coen said.
The Jaguars earned the pride they felt to reach this day. They also earned everything that came with such a devastating loss.
Perhaps, some day if surely not today, that’ll be a valuable feeling, too.
“We hate losing, first and foremost,” Hines-Allen said. “It’s not going to sit right. It shouldn’t sit right. But these are opportunities to grow. I’m going to look at this opportunity. Obviously, we can’t come to practice. We can’t practice another day. We can’t go through another day. So, how am I going to grow and be ready for my team next year? That’s the way we need to look at it.”
To see that future, they must reckon with their past.
Quarterback Trevor Lawrence finished Sunday 18-of-30 passing for 207 yards, with three touchdowns and two interceptions; he added six runs for 31 yards. Lawrence was nearly perfect in the second half, which included a pair of fourth-quarter touchdowns to put the Jags ahead, but the QB will torture himself with memories of the picks.
“You feel like there was more out there for us,” Lawrence said. “It’s still really, really disappointing. The guys care a lot about it. That’s why we’re all feeling this way.”
After closing the regular season with one turnover in six games — the best stretch of Lawrence’s career — he made a crucial early mistake against the Bills. The 2021 No. 1 pick identified linebacker Shaq Lawson underneath in a Cover-2 zone, but Lawrence didn’t do enough to move Lawson with his eyes.
First turnover of the game: Shaq Thompson picks off Lawrence!
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That’s too big of a miss in the postseason, and the Bills took a 3-0 without moving the chains on the other side of the interception. Lawrence, who had two games with multiple picks in the regular season, forced his final bid to receiver Jakobi Meyers, but safety Cole Bishop pounced for the takeaway after cornerback Tre White’s deflection.
“The reality is if you take points off the board, these are going to be one-score games, and you’re going to need them at the end,” Lawrence said. “I wish we played cleaner in certain areas. I wish I made one or two decisions a little bit differently, threw a better ball here or there. You’ve got to live with it. It’s life, and you don’t get a do-over. That’s a bummer, but I know we left everything out there. I know I put everything into it this year. It sucks we don’t get to keep playing because this is a special group.”
Lawrence threw a 3-yard dart to wideout Brian Thomas Jr. that gave the Jaguars a 7-3 lead early in the second quarter, but they couldn’t capitalize after linebacker Devin Lloyd recovered a fumble on the ensuing kickoff. Six plays later, Lawrence was stuffed on fourth-and-2, giving the Bills the ball at their own 8-yard line.
The Jacksonville defense, which largely held its own against Allen, couldn’t pick up the slack after the fourth-down failure. Allen led a 10-play, 92-yard touchdown drive to put the Bills up, 10-7. They only needed a single third-down conversion on the long jaunt, and it came on Allen’s first scoring run.
A series later, Lawrence had tight end Brenton Strange breaking free up the left sideline, but the QB’s pass was deflected at the line, wiping away the potential for a long gain. Lawrence and wideout Parker Washington (seven catches, 107 yards, one touchdown) had a third-down miscommunication on the next play.
Even after a mostly nightmarish first half, kicker Cam Little hooked a 54-yarder at the buzzer that could’ve tied the score, 10-10. Not even the rookie phenom could escape the uncharacteristic breakdowns.
On the whole, the defense had a winning formula. The Jags ranked first against the run (85.6 yards per game) during the season and held the Bills to 79 yards on 26 carries. Rushing champ James Cook finished with 15 totes for 46 yards.
The Jags were happy to test Allen’s patience, as he methodically worked his way down the field for most of the day to the tune of 28-of-35 passing for 273 yards and one touchdown (plus two rushing scores). He was efficient and accurate, and he was careful with the ball. Considering Allen made a couple trips to the medical tent for a concussion evaluation and a look at a twisted leg, it was clear the Jags were intent on making the Bills feel it with every tackle.
They were largely responsible, too, but had a couple issues in the final quarter of the season. Lloyd passed off tight end Dalton Kincaid to cornerback Greg Newsome’s zone, but Allen found Kincaid in transition for a 15-yard touchdown and 20-17 lead. On the next possession, Newsome got caught looking in the offensive backfield for a split second, and Allen made him pay with a 36-yard strike to wideout Brandin Cooks, eventually setting up the winning score.
ALLEN TO A WIDE OPEN COOKS. 36 YARDS.
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“In any playoff game, mistakes are always magnified because it always comes down to the end,” Lawrence said. “You don’t see a lot of blowouts in the playoffs. Everything is on the line. Everyone is always fighting to keep playing. Whether it’s turnovers or turnovers on downs, those add up and take points off the board.
“Everyone is trying their best to make every play, but the attention to detail is so important, taking care of the ball, it’s magnified.”
Lawrence has been through this before, once on each side of the docket. He helped the Jaguars erase a 27-0 deficit to beat the Los Angeles Chargers three years ago in the wild-card round, but they fell to the Kansas City Chiefs a week later, unable to disrupt Kansas City’s dynastic run while QB Patrick Mahomes played through a high ankle sprain.
There were important takeaways from that experience that must be applied to this one. For starters, the 2022 Jaguars caught fire down the stretch to win the AFC South, and Lawrence was coming into his own under first-year coach Doug Pederson.
The division was supposed to be theirs for the foreseeable future. Until it wasn’t. While the AFC South is far more competitive now than then, the internal momentum in Duval County is comparable.
“You’ve got to earn it every year,” Lawrence said. “There’s no guaranteed success in this business, in this league.”
The Jaguars won’t waltz into the 2026 with anything promised but the work they vow to attack with the same ferocity. They must. Lawrence doesn’t want to go another three years until his next playoff opportunity. Owner Shad Khan, who aggressively hired Coen last January to seek out the Jaguars’ elusive next chapter, surely won’t be interested in backpedaling again, as they did after blowing up a roster that advanced to the 2017 AFC Championship Game.
Historically, the Jaguars experienced these one-off highs before tripping up and landing in another rebuild. They haven’t been to the postseason in back-to-back years since Y2K.
This season’s voyage felt and looked different. It felt more like the beginning of something, which made the end Sunday feel so new.
“We’ve got a lot of guys who are hungry,” Hines-Allen said. “We are going to attack this offseason, grow from this offseason and come back ready to win the whole thing next year.
“Let’s not forget this moment and continue to grow from here.”