New Orleans Saints: The three strongest areas of the Jacksonville Jaguars
By Jason Reed
2. The run game
Even with Minshew far outperforming what we all though capable of him, the heart and soul, the bread and butter, the engine of this offense is absolutely the running game. The Jaguars have an old-school head coach in Doug Marrone that wants to pound the ball through the middle and that is what they have done all season.
Sometimes it has looked really good for the Jaguars, other times it hasn’t and whether or not it works usually indicates the kind of game the offense is having. There are games in which Leonard Fournette rushes for 225 yards and there are games where he is in the negative all game before busting out one long run in the fourth quarter.
The Jaguars did not start the year running the ball a lot but have gone to it the last two weeks. Fournette carried the ball 29 times two weeks ago against the Denver Broncos and 23 times last week against the Panthers.
After his two-best showings of the year, chances are that the Jaguars hand it off to Fournette around 25 times yet again.
This should be the gameplan, at least, as the Jaguars are coming up against a defensive line that can get to the quarterback and a secondary that has shown up in recent weeks.
Pounding the ball and getting this defense tired is the key for the Jaguars to win this game. If the Saints can stop the run game early then it is going to be a very tough task for the Jaguars to score. If they get in a rhythm early then we might see the Saints’ defense on the field more often than not.