The sportsbooks have released their betting odds for Monday night’s AFC showdown between Jacksonville and Buffalo.Â
Let’s jump in and find our favorite pick at the top sportsbooks!
NFL Pick
- Bills -5.5 (-110) at Bet365 (check our Bet365 Review)
Jacksonville Jaguars vs. Buffalo Bills
Monday, September 23, 2024 – 07:30 PM ET at Highmark Stadium
The Importance of Play-Callers: Press Taylor
Jacksonville’s current 0-2 record does not reflect a mere rut that can quickly be amended. Instead, it reflects a prolonged problem that began in 2023 when Jacksonville’s head coach assigned play-calling duties to Press Taylor, the offensive coordinator.
Whereas the Jaguars made the playoffs, and won a playoff game, in 2022, they failed to make the playoffs in 2023 and currently do not look like a playoff competitor. Statistics, such as their decline in yards per game, reflect the enfeeblement of their offense. They currently rank 22nd in total offense and 27th in scoring offense.
Press Taylor bears much of the responsibility: he is a terrible play-caller who still has his job because Jacksonville’s head coach is loyal to a fault. As a play-caller, he does not recognize tactical opportunities as they present themselves in a game, he does not put his best players in position to succeed, and is often predictable and rarely creative.
Joe Brady, Buffalo’s Play-Caller
Whereas Jacksonville has steadily declined since Taylor assumed play-calling duties, Buffalo is 9-2 since Joe Brady took over as his team’s play-caller.
With Brady, Buffalo’s offense mixes things up and spreads the ball around. So many different players – wide receivers, tight ends, and running backs – are able to get involved. Consequently, defenses are not able to lock in and remove Buffalo’s strongest offensive weapon.
For example, Buffalo won its opening game with Dalton Kincaid hardly contributing, but Kincaid collected four times as many receptions in Buffalo’s Week 2 victory.
Overall, the Bills are one of three teams who are scoring over 30 points per game, even though their offense slowed down in their most recent blowout win over Miami.
I emphasize the importance of play-callers because folks want to show optimism toward Jacksonville, thinking that this 0-2 team can simply come into Buffalo and turn things around. My point here is that Jacksonville’s issue is deeply rooted and systemic, such that fundamental changes will need to take place before it can compete with a high-powered offense, such as Buffalo’s, that has figured out so much which Jacksonville’s has not.
Trevor Lawrence’s Ongoing Issue
While Jacksonville’s offense has, in a general sense – meaning regardless of who its opponent is – declined, Buffalo presents an additional significant problem for the Jaguars. The Bills are a tough matchup for the Jags because, as I will describe, they have a good, high-ranking pass defense.
Throughout his career, Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence has struggled against strong pass defenses. Last year, Cleveland owned the second-best pass defense, and, with the same key defensive backs healthy for last week’s game, limited Lawrence to a 71.5 passer rating.
We likewise saw Lawrence struggle last year against the Chiefs, Ravens, and Browns, all of whom have highly-ranked pass defenses.
Is Lawrence A Bust?
Trevor Lawrence was drafted with the expectation of being a generational quarterback. You can see that he has great mechanics. As a quarterback, he is technically very competent; however, to be a great quarterback, you have to be more than just a robot.
Yes, he does the right movements with precision, but he lacks a feel for the game. He has terrible instincts. Just look at last week’s game when he cost his team a critical two points: he was sacked in his own end zone because he unwittingly drifted into an opposing defender. He lacks the instinct to be dominant and take over a game.
In fact, he’ll often hesitate as a passer, in part because he tries too hard to avoid throwing interceptions – he is overly cautious as a passer, which is why NextGenStats lists him as the second-least aggressive passer.
With Lawrence and his 51% completion rate, sustaining drives is very difficult for Jacksonville.
Buffalo’s Excellent Pass Defense
So far, Buffalo has held Arizona quarterback Kyle Murray to 162 passing yards – whereas Murray amassed 104 more passing yards in last week’s game – and Miami’s Tua Tagovailoa to 145 passing yards – whereas he collected nearly 200 more passing yards against the Jaguars.
Despite Buffalo’s different injuries on defense, and because of its scheme and how well-coached it is, quarterbacks are struggling mightily against the Bills’ defense. Buffalo is doing the seventh-best job at limiting opposing passer rating. Marvin Harrison Jr., Tyreek Hill, and other high-caliber wide receivers are unproductive against Buffalo’s pass defense.
One thing that Buffalo’s defensive coordinator does is disguise coverages. Quarterbacks are seeing one thing from the defense before they snap the ball and a different thing after the snap.
Lawrence, in his games, often struggles to read defensive coverages, so Buffalo’s ability to disguise them will prove very effective.
Lawrence Needs Help
Of course, it does not help Lawrence – a quarterback who badly needs a viable supporting cast – that his teammates – not to mention his inept offensive coordinator – are making things harder for him. His wide receivers are struggling to execute. They have, by a clear margin, the highest drop percentage.
Starting running back Travis Etienne is also failing to help out his quarterback. Etienne is averaging a very paltry 3.8 YPC.
In the offseason, Jacksonville did much too little to address a glaring problem at the offensive line that continues to limit its offensive potential: in addition to Etienne struggling for rushing yards, the Jaguars on offense rank 31st at limiting sacks.
Jacksonville, led by an awful general manager whom San Francisco had wisely fired, selected a deep-threat wide receiver in the NFL Draft.
They chose Brian Thomas Jr. at the expense of selecting a high-powered offensive lineman. While I really like this wide receiver, Lawrence does not have the necessary time to throw him the ball downfield before he gets sacked.
Christian Kirk has no-showed so far. Gabe Davis is hardly a factor. Evan Engram has likewise vanished and is banged up. Lawrence lacks weapons that he can rely on.
Jacksonville Can’t Exploit Buffalo’s Weakness
It is a conceptual truth that every team has weaknesses. Buffalo’s weakness is its injury-ridden linebacker group.
The Bills position their safeties in a way that protects those linebackers, and they are able to control the line of scrimmage. Jacksonville won’t be able to run the ball and attack that injury-ridden linebacking group because its offensive line will prove inferior in this matchup.
Whereas the Jaguars rank 22nd in run-block win rate, Buffalo ranks third in run-stop win. For the third straight week, because its offense is so thoroughly limited, Jacksonville will barely manage a double-digit scoring total.
Josh Allen
The best quarterback in this game will be Buffalo’s Josh Allen, whose passer rating this season is 41.9 points higher than Lawrence’s.
With his characteristically strong arm and his accuracy, Allen is far more efficient, explosive, and otherwise productive as a passer.
This spread is sitting at around a touchdown, and you have one quarterback in Lawrence who is struggling to find the end zone, and another in Allen who is helping his team score en masse.
Mobile Quarterbacks
Allen poses a threat to Jacksonville’s defense not in the least because the Jaguars are missing their top cornerback to injury, but because he is a mobile quarterback who is always dangerous as a runner.
Jacksonville’s defensive coordinator was with Atlanta last year, where we can see how comfortable he was against mobile quarterbacks.
Minnesota, led by journeyman quarterback Josh Dobbs, a 1-8 Arizona team led by Kyler Murray, and a struggling Chicago team led by current Steeler Justin Fields all beat Nielsen’s Falcons while thriving against his defense.
Nielsen’s Falcons allowed 30+ points three times. Dobbs’ Vikings and Fields’ Bears account for two of those times, and now Nielsen will have to deal with a much better quarterback in the All-Pro selection Allen.
Avoiding Jacksonville’s Pass Rush
Of course, the Jaguars are not a team bereft of positive qualities. Its strongest asset on defense is its pass rush. But we won’t perceive these positive qualities on Monday because Buffalo will be able to avoid being bothered by them.
A pass rush is particularly dangerous when it is third-and-long because that is when defenders know that the opposing quarterback will pass.
Buffalo will, in order to overcome Jacksonville’s pass rush, avoid third-and-long situations by using Allen as a passer and Allen as a runner.
Running back James Cook, who is averaging five YPC behind an offensive line that ranks third in run-block win rate, will also be effective against a Jaguars run defense that just allowed Cleveland’s top two running backs to average five YPC behind an offensive line that missed both of its starting tackles.
Buffalo’s strong run game, led as it is by Allen and Cook, will keep Buffalo’s offense balanced and unpredictable, whereas Jacksonville will struggle both through the air and on the ground.
The Situation
Jacksonville backers like the Jaguars because they’ve supposedly had Buffalo’s number. However, we’re only talking about the last two games, which the Jaguars have won. Josh Allen is 1-2 against the Jaguars, a losing record that does not present a meaningful data sample.
Jacksonville’s last win against the Bills was last October in London, where the Jaguars had the benefit of having played in the previous week. Whereas they were already acclimated to the different time zone, Buffalo was not, which perhaps explains why so many Bills players were suffering injuries during that game.
Despite also having Ken Dorsey instead of Joe Brady as their play-caller, the Bills were still taking control of the game in the second half against what was, at that time, a much more successful Jaguars team.
Getting Back on Track
Jacksonville’s recent success against Buffalo actually makes me more confident in my bet on Buffalo.
Remembering last year, Buffalo will not fail to take 0-2 Jacksonville seriously. The Bills, who have improved greatly since that London game, will take revenge.
People trying to defend Jacksonville are saying that the Jaguars will come out desperate since they are 0-2. But were the Jaguars not already desperate when, with a playoff berth on the line, they were upset by the lowly Titans in the last game of the regular season last year?
Were they not desperate when they were 0-1 heading into last week? The Jaguars have been losers for a while now: they’ve lost seven of their last eight games, going back to last year, with the one win coming against Carolina. They are now demoralized. Trevor Lawrence said it himself: “We suck right now.”
Those are not the words that you want to hear from a guy who is supposed to be leading his team right now. I am not feeling positive vibes in Jacksonville right now, so I have no idea why I should expect a hungry Jaguars squad to go into Buffalo and suddenly turn things around, as if that were possible given its deeply-rooted problems.
Takeaway
Given Buffalo’s extended success under Joe Brady’s play-calling and Jacksonville’s prolonged ongoing decline, I feel like the odds should be more like -10.5.
With these two teams heading for a while now in vastly different directions, oddsmakers are way off here.
The Bills will win this game by double digits, their efficient, well-run, offense with its many weapons eventually breaking down a Jaguars defense that will be worn down by the failure of its offense – with its awful offensive line, its overrated quarterback, its wide receiver malfunctions, its deficient rush attack – to sustain drives.
I am seeing a 27-13 win for the Bills.
NFL Pick: Bills -5.5 (-110) at Bet365
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