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These days, you don’t hear as much about the fourth-down gambles that go the other way, but Doug Pederson had one at the most critical moment of his Jaguars’ crucial AFC South showdown with the Texans on Sunday.
After Houston missed a 50-yard field goal with 25 seconds left in the first half, Jacksonville advanced the ball from its own 42 to the Texans’ 1 on a third-and-8. Trevor Lawrence found Christian Kirk on a deep crosser, and the speedy slot was pushed out by Tavierre Thomas just shy of the goal line. That brought up first-and-goal from the 1 with just a second remaining.
The Jags were fortunate that Kirk happened to be knocked out of bounds with time left, and it was time to cash in on that good fortune. So Pederson chose to do it, well, his way—by going for the jugular, and seven points rather than three.
It didn’t work out.
The Jags ran a quick-snap toss to the right side, the Texans were all over it and kept the deficit at 13–7 after the Kirk play could’ve smothered the hosts.
So Pederson’s dice roll came up empty. But regrets? Pederson didn’t have any of those.
“First of all, I think the layman watching the game would’ve decided to go for three there,” Pederson told me from the team bus as the Jags left Houston. “I knew we had the ball coming out of the third, to start the second half, and just wanted to be aggressive there at the end of the half. I felt like we had some momentum with the big completion to Christian. I just wanted to take advantage of that situation. I give Houston all the credit. They made a stop. Guy made a great tackle in the hole.”
The Texans, as it turned out, would do more than that. They picked off Lawrence on the opening possession of the second half, and turned it into a 14–13 lead.
But none of that fazed Pederson.
Mostly because he knew how his team would respond to his decision-making.
“They handled it great,” Pederson continued. “They know I’m going to be aggressive. I don’t surprise my football team with decisions.”
And Pederson’s players responded by taking a game for the division lead by the throat, clearly showing how they’d taken on the personality of their coach.
The Jaguars’ 24–21 win was about a lot more than that sequence at the end of the half. In many ways, that sequence summed up how the team truly has become Pederson’s—in the same fashion as some of his best Philly teams. And that leaves Jacksonville in a pretty great place heading into December.
