Urban Meyer Clarifies the Jaguars' QB Sneak Situation, Boiling it Down to Live Reps
For the second week in a row, the Jacksonville Jaguars' failure to get just one yard has led to a heartbreaking loss. Now, it has become a bit more clear just why the Jaguars have struggled so much on 4th-and-inches at the goal line: the QB sneak isn't a part of the offense.
With the Jaguars facing 4th-and-inches at the one-yard line in Sunday's 37-19 loss to the Tennessee Titans, the Jaguars opted to hand the ball off to backup running back Carlos Hyde as opposed to running James Robinson or asking 6-foot-6 rookie quarterback Trevor Lawrence to sneak it.
The QB sneak is one of the more traditional plays from the one-yard line, with it more often than not resulting in a win for the offense. For the Jaguars, a win for the offense on fourth-down would have meant Sunday becoming a 31-25 game.
Instead, for the second week in a row, the Jaguars didn't opt for Lawrence to attempt to will himself into the end zone for a game-changing score. Instead, Hyde got the ball and lost a handful of yards on a negative play, giving the ball back to the Titans and effectively ending the Jaguars' comeback bid.
"And the quarterback sneak, he's not quite comfortable with that yet. We've been practicing that. I know that might sound silly, but when you've never done it, it's something that we need to continue to make that, so you can make that call in that critical situation," Jaguars head coach Urban Meyer said on Sunday.
Bur while Meyer stated the Jaguars didn't call a quarterback sneak due to a comfort level on offense, he clarified on Monday that the comfort level had nothing to do with his rookie quarterback. Instead, it had to do with the Jaguars' coaching staff and their lack of trust in the play.
“That was our staff, the offensive coaches said that," Meyer said on Monday when asked about the lack of sneaks.
"Trevor is comfortable doing anything. The comment made to me was, ‘We have not done it live.’ If you say Trevor go do this, Trevor’s going to do it to the best of his ability. But that came up over the headsets and he [Darrell Bevell] said just, ‘We have not done that live.’”
As Meyer noted, there aren't many "live" reps during the regular-season, though Meyer noted they had those types of practices during training camp and it was "obviously not enough with quarterback sneak." This means that since training camp, the only real chances Lawrence would have to run a sneak would have been in the preseason or in any of the team's first regular-season games.
The lack of a quarterback sneak in the offense has now reared its ugly head two weeks running, though it appears the problem comes down to a trust factor with the coaching staff. With that said, Lawrence was the No. 1 overall pick for a reason and has already had much more difficult tasks put on his plate than running a quarterback sneak in a live game.
"No, I feel comfortable. Obviously, I haven't really ran it before in a game, but I feel comfortable. It's something we've worked. We trust our guys up front, we trust our backs in that situation," Lawrence said on Sunday.
"Obviously, I'd love to get in there, but if we make the play, it's like no one says anything, but it's a TFL, and that doesn't look great obviously. So, we all can get better. But no, a QB sneak is something we can all get to and I feel comfortable with."
