SAN DIEGO -- Jacksonville Jaguars players said they were shocked when they didn’t beat Green Bay in the season opener. What they should be feeling on Sunday is embarrassment.
That’s really the best way to describe what happened during the Jaguars’ 38-14 loss to San Diego in Qualcomm Stadium on Sunday afternoon. It was a complete meltdown. Nothing worked on offense or defense. They turned it over three times, committed 12 penalties and couldn’t stop Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers.
Just two weeks into the 2016 season and it feels like all the optimism the team had generated from free agency and the draft is gone. It may have fallen out of the team charter on Friday somewhere over the Midwest on the way from Jacksonville to San Diego.
The heat on coach Gus Bradley, already high after a 12-37 record through three-plus seasons, now gets cranked up even higher. General manager Dave Caldwell said before the season that the Jaguars were good enough in Year 4 of the rebuild that they could beat every team on their schedule.
"The previous years I felt like we had to be perfect just to be in to a game late into a game, where here we can overcome a bad play, a fumble, a backed-up situation, a deficit," Caldwell said two weeks ago. "Offensively we can score quickly and defensively I think we can hold the fort down.
"... That's the biggest thing: We have a chance."
That wasn’t the case on Sunday against the Chargers. The Jaguars gave up a touchdown on the Chargers’ opening drive, were down 14-0 one play into the second quarter, and never got past the San Diego 36-yard line in the first half. Bortles threw two picks, fumbled once, and completed 31-of-50 passes for 329 yards and two touchdowns.
Meanwhile, Rivers was doing what he normally does to the Jaguars’ defense: completing pass after pass after pass with little difficulty. Two of his three incompletions in the first half were balls he threw away on scrambles, and he threw for 114 yards and two TDs to stake the Chargers to a 21-0 lead.
Rivers finished 17-for-24 for 220 yards and four touchdowns, bringing his TD total in seven games against the Jaguars to 19 (only four interceptions). Running back Melvin Gordon recorded his first career 100-yard game, too (102 yards, one TD).
Frustrations boiled over in the second half. Defensive end Jared Odrick was penalized for unsportsmanlike conduct for yelling at an official who penalized him for lining up offside. He slammed his helmet to the ground on the sideline and then started yelling at Bradley. Backup quarterback Chad Henne calmed Odrick down.
Bradley is now 12-38 -- including 1-12 in games played in September -- and the franchise hasn’t shown measurable progress in his fourth season. Owner Shad Khan said after last season that a winning record in 2016 was "everybody’s reasonable expectation." Caldwell has said publicly that he believes Khan wouldn’t make a decision on a coaching change during the season but would wait until the end of the season and then evaluate the franchise’s progress. However, an embarrassing loss like this could change things. The Jaguars play host to Baltimore (2-0) this week before traveling to London to play Indianapolis (0-2) on Oct. 2.