After the field goal went through, after the idea of the third-largest comeback in postseason history became real, Trevor Lawrence wheeled around in circles with his head leaned forward, running toward his Jaguars teammates like a child who finally got clearance to join friends at recess.
This moment of celebration, this expression, this aura, this vibe, this smile, would have seemed notable had it not been plastered across his face for almost the entirety of the night. Sure, Lawrence seemed displeased with each of the four interceptions he threw in the first half. He would pucker up his lips into that strange, Peyton Manning–like smile-frown that we all do after polishing off a bag of Sour Patch Kids. After the third one, he looked at the video board as if it might contain some sort of basics-of-quarterbacking PowerPoint he could utilize for the second half.
But, he also kept walking back to the sideline like he owned the place, like having to slog through quarterbacking hell and spot one of the best opposing quarterbacks, best pass-rushing tandems and most expensive secondaries in the league 27 points was all part of the plan. And, amid a season where players seemed to be better than ever at sniffing out sham confidence, sham personality and sham talent in their own quarterbacks, no one seemed to blink. His teammates trusted him. Plenty of fans didn’t turn off their televisions. Somehow, everyone knew this was at least possible. Somehow, Lawrence had everyone roped in together.
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We can call Saturday, and Jacksonville’s 31–30 wild-card win over the Chargers, the night Lawrence arrived in the NFL. And, like the self-help guru says, it necessitated a trip through the worst of it all. Take your pick of the platitudes. It’s always darkest before dawn or, like John Wooden said, things work out best for those who make the best out of the way things work out. Lawrence became the first player in modern NFL playoff history to throw three picks in one quarter. He was the first to throw four in a playoff half since Brett Favre in 2001. He was also damn near perfect in the second half. The Jaguars became the first team in NFL history to win a playoff game in which they were minus-five in turnover margin and just the 29th team to do it … ever.
The comeback—from down 27–0 in the first half, and down 30–14 late in the third quarter and still down 10 points when taking over the ball with 8:47 to play—says a lot about Lawrence but it also says a lot about a franchise that was similarly, collectively, backed into the worst possible situation merely a little more than a year ago. Had it not been for their owner mercifully willing to do what billionaires almost never do—admitting a mistake, admitting, in some indirect way, that he was conned, duped, deceived, lied to and, in that process, setting a promising young franchise on a voyage bound for the nearest iceberg—we may currently be talking about what the Jaguars would do with the No. 1 pick in the 2023 draft. We may be talking about needing to airlift into Duval and rescue Lawrence ourselves. We may be talking about Urban Meyer kicking multiple players (gasp). It’s strange to think—to know—that this quarterback, this team, this kind of promise and this (statistically) improbable run of six straight wins, and seven of eight, that began with a 10-point loss to the Chiefs in Week 10 existed somewhere in the DNA of a team that went 3–14 a year ago.
It’s even stranger that the Jaguars managed to artfully limit their time in the post-Meyer football abyss. From coaching dunce to swaggering genius. From wasted talent to limitless potential. Jacksonville’s second half was a kind of artful interpretation of that.
The Jaguars’ season will come full circle in a lot of ways next weekend in Arrowhead (should the heavily favored Bills and Bengals both win) where, in the same locker room before Thanksgiving, coach Doug Pederson predicted all of this would happen. But it really doesn’t matter. The Jaguars could get waxed by Patrick Mahomes again but they still fulfilled their contribution to the football zeitgeist in 2022. They showed us the power of admitting our biggest mistakes. They showed us how valuable it is to keep swinging (or, in Lawrence’s case, more of a stabbing, especially on the critical two-point conversion try in the fourth quarter). They showed us what happens when you let football players be young and fun, whipping out the damn T-formation on a critical fourth-and-1 as if the Jaguars were facing off against Air Force; as if the Jaguars were in a backyard somewhere and not about to make NFL history.
For the franchise, this moment was as massive and important as breaking ground in Northern Florida in the first place. A ho-hum 24–13 victory over the Chargers wouldn’t have fit the bill. Some defensive trudge, like the game last Saturday night against the Titans that lifted them into the playoffs to begin with, wouldn’t have carried the proper symbolism.
Several times in their mostly unsuccessful run as a franchise, the Jaguars have sprung to life before flatlining again. But 2021 was the worst of it. The year that preceded this one should have cemented them as a laughingstock football outpost for a decade. And instead, through it all, Lawrence came out smiling. There is nothing more valuable.
