Denver Broncos vs Jacksonville Jaguars: Minshew Mania

No sacks at Mile High

Denver Broncos getting 0 (with words: zero!) sacks across the first 3 games is almost unheard of. Especially with Bradley Chubb and Von Miller in the lineup, that were considered as one of the best pass-rushing duos in the league. A lot of people (including me) expected this defensive unit to thrive under a defensive mind like Vic Fangio. But it didn't really turn out that way, which is one of the reasons why they are 0-3 to start the season.

And their defensive woes don't stop there. They weren't really conceding too many points, but the inability to force turnovers is definitely frustrating. Alongside zero sacks, they also have the same number in both forced fumbles and interception categories! This offense is not spectacular and could use some help from this defense. -4 turnover ratio will simply not do it.

Offensively, they are pretty much what we expected them to be. Mediocre. They need to run the ball at home with altitude being a factor for the opposing defenses. Wear them out and set up play-action stuff for Flacco. A rare thing he thrived at, while playing for Baltimore. Jaguars pass D can be overly aggressive at times and get caught with their hand in a cookie jar. Slipping a guy like Emmanuel Sanders behind their back for a big play would be a great boost for this offense which would open things up a bit.

Ramsey taking the spotlight

Pro-Bowl corner stole a bit of the spotlight from his rookie QB, who led them to a big win over Titans on TNF. Ramsey asked for a trade. Got his request granted from the Jaguars, but they are asking for a king's ransom which no team is willing to pay at the moment. Then he skipped a couple of practices because of an illness that many thought was fake. And after that left the team to be with his wife for the birth of their child. He is on the right side of questionable tag, after catching the team flight to Denver.

We've seen glimpses of Gardner Minshew's potential in his first game when he replaced the injured Nick Foles vs Kansas City Chiefs. They simplified a gameplan for him in the first two games, but finally removed the training wheels in game 3 and it paid off. With the help of the defense, Jacksonville defeated Tennessee Titans in a rainy TNF matchup. Minshew threw for 204 yards with 2 touchdowns and 0 interceptions. He has 692 on the year with 5/1 TD to INT ratio and 73.9 completion percentage.

I'm not that surprised by the solid passing numbers. Their offensive coordinator is John DeFilippo. A guy that was Derek Carr's QB coach early in his NFL career. Same with Carson Wentz in that Eagles Superbowl run. He was let go by the Vikings last year for running a too pass-happy offense for Mike Zimmer's taste, who is adamant about running the ball.

Broncos vs Jaguars best bet

But running the ball is simply not DeFilippo's style. And we can see that looking at some advanced metrics. Jacksonville is running the ball on just 36% of the plays, which places them in 23rd place in the league. All that with a rookie 6th round QB under the center and a guy like Leonard Fournette in the backfield and 100% healthy O-line.

With all that being said, I was initially looking to go over the total, but the weather report made me go another way. The forecast is predicting a very windy game, which will probably hurt a lot of passing efficiency for both offenses. I still expect Jacksonville to do better in the short passing stuff, but ultimately, I believe that the running games will play the main role in this one.

As I said, that's not the forte of this Jaguars offense. DeFilippo likes to call it differently and Leonard Fournette looks sluggish this year. There were news about him dropping weight to be more explosive this year, but from what I could see, it didn't help him. Moreso, it hurt his ability to grind out the tough yards in between the tackles. Also, if there is a weakness to this Jacksonville defense, it's stopping the run.

We also might be guilty of firing up Minshew's bandwagon bit too soon. It's not easy to win games on the road in this league, let alone being a 6th round rookie with very little experience.