In this episode, Taylor reacts to the Jacksonville Jaguars NFL week 15 walk off overtime interception for touchdown win over the Dallas Cowboys. When he talks about the Jaguars, he lauds the play of power on quarterback Trevor Lawrence, worries about the play of the offensive line without Cam Robinson, and talks about the future of the organization with their current roster/coaching staff. When he switches to the Cowboys, he talks about the play of Tyron Smith in his return to the lineup, worries about the decision making process is that led to the loss, and talks about their place in the NFC playoff picture.
In this episode, Taylor reacts to the Jacksonville Jaguars NFL week 15 walk off overtime interception for touchdown win over the Dallas Cowboys. When he talks about the Jaguars, he lauds the play of power on quarterback Trevor Lawrence, worries about the play of the offensive line without Cam Robinson, and talks about the future of the organization with their current roster/coaching staff. When he switches to the Cowboys, he talks about the play of Tyron Smith in his return to the lineup, worries about the decision making process is that led to the loss, and talks about their place in the NFC playoff picture.
Taylor: What's up, everybody? It's the Roundtable sports podcast. My name is Taylor McLean, excited to come to you with our third game of the week. The Jacksonville Jaguars over time walk off int win over the Dallas Cowboys. Full disclosure, I am a Cowboys fan, albeit a realistic Cowboys fan. I'm from Texas and was seven, eight and ten when the Cowboys won their last championships. So I wasn't going to do this game right up front. I was going to give myself a little time to, quote unquote, grieve, even though the Cowboys qualified for the playoffs regardless. But then I watched Desmond Ritter play and I just didn't have the heart to tell Atlanta fans that I wasn't excited about his prospects. So I thought we'd go ahead and dig into the Cowboys versus the Jaguars here. Before we get into the football, let's give a shout out to the sponsor of the podcast, Evergreen Power Solutions. They're a concierge power company for my Texas listeners only, unfortunately, at this time, that they will go in and shop around for the best power rate right now that you can get. And then when it comes time to renegotiate and see what would happen at the end of what a contract would be with the normal power company, they go in, renegotiate the rate for you. If they can get it lower, they do. If they can't, then it doesn't go up. So you're not going to have to participate in higher energy costs. If that's where the energy market goes, give them a call at 8886-6586, use prompt number two and then tell them that the Roundtable Sports podcast and Taylor McClain sent you. Now let's get on to the game. And as I said in the beginning, this was a devastating loss for the Cowboys, as much as a devastating loss can be when you still qualify for the playoffs and you didn't really do anything to improve or disprove your standings exactly. The Eagles seem to be a juggernaut at this point, even though they lost. Jalen hurtz like we'll go over a little bit later when we get to the Cowboys. But by and large, as far as devastating Cowboys losses go, this wasn't too terribly bad on that Richter scale. One of the reasons is that I've been on Trevor Lawrence since last year and now we're seeing some signs of improvement from last year. Not that it happened just in this game, we've been seeing it all season. It's pretty clear that the game has slowed down significantly from where he was at in his rookie season. Part of that being that the scheme they were running at that time was not great and there wasn't a lot of easy throws or really just even easy plays with that Jaguar squad last year. When the margins are so thin for these NFL games to have something impeding you, like Urban Meyer and a lack of playmakers around Trevor did last year. Shouldn't surprise a lot of people that you bring in two receivers with a lot of speed. You bring in Evan Ingram and you bring in a coach that is less than five years removed from a Super Bowl victory and knows what he's doing on offense. And it doesn't take connect the dots to show the line between those developments and Trevor looking a lot better. And as I said, with the speed of the game, part of it, never forget that Peyton Manning threw 26 interceptions in his rookie year. So the fact that Trevor is throwing with more anticipation and making some really pretty throws throughout the game is something that was expected, but I don't know how many people saw last year and also expected what we're seeing right now. Everybody's really reactionary and quarterback wins dependent on their evaluations at this point, but a lot of times you have to look past what you see in the wins column and look more to the skill and the eye test, especially in the rookie season. You want to see flashes of what he could be and what Trevor's brought to the table. This is a hell of a lot more consistency as far as his throws go and as far as the decisions that he's making on a week to week basis. The Jaguars did a good job of getting the ball out of Trevor's hands in this game and not letting the pass rush get to him and really tee up by calling too many things that were terribly down the field. And then Trevor was able to use his legs, especially on the long Zay Jones touchdown, which was a beautiful move by Zay Jones to get by boss Man Fat, aka Kelvin Joseph, who we'll talk about a little bit later. I love to see that so many more things are coming easily to Trevor, both with the offense, with the schematics of what they're doing. There's a lot more open throws and easy throws, pitch and catch for Trevor to make. But it's not just that, it's the complicated throws that he's making, the over the top throws that take a lot of touch and take a lot of guts to throw sometimes. So I put a lot of stock in those moments because not only is it difficult, but people can also pucker up a little bit and overthrow those under, throw those throws, just a litany of things that can go wrong in the deep passing game. And everything has to be synced up between the wide receiver and the quarterback. And the quarterback has a lot of times really tight windows to make those throws into, and Trevor is increasingly making those throws and stretching defenses to the point of break with his vertical passing. One thing that was on the film last year that has carried through that we're getting to see a lot more because there's more opportunities to unleash it is the arm strength. I talked today about josh Allen. And I kind of have this analogy that I use with baseball pitchers throwing 100, saying that Justin, Josh and Patrick all throw 100 for reference. That way you can kind of downgrade that from there and give people a feel for how fast you think they're throwing the ball and how hard you think they can throw. And while I don't feel extremely tempted to put him on that god tier exactly, like, I still think Justin and Josh and Patrick probably still have a little bit more hose. It's not a lot if they're throwing 100. Trevor's throwing in the 97 98 range, so a tick off, but that's really quibbling. And I might be a victim of semantics or hyperbole or both with that assessment, but the point is that Trevor has a really live arm and you can really see him putting it on his guys and throwing darts out there with those hard throws and showing touch at the same time. Like, there was a couple of beautiful over the shoulder throws that he had Christian Kirk on one of them, and I believe it was Zay Jones on the other, where I was like, Whoo, those are big boy throws. He's been doing that throughout this season. It seems to be building as he gets more comfortable and the team kind of gels around him. Might be one fly in the ointment with that part of it. Kim Robinson hurt his knee on that day. It was on the third. Zay jones touchdown. He kind of gets driven back and gets driven back into one of his own guys, or one of the cowboy guys. I can't remember exactly who it was. But he gets driven back into him and hurts his knee. There's some speculation that he might be out for the year. And I say speculation. Really? If it's a torn meniscus exactly like they're saying here, then that's for the year, for sure. You got to get surgery on that, and that could be a huge problem. Not a big proponent of the right tackle, cam Taylor, who isn't absolutely terrible, but is not a plus guy by any means, in my book, and gets beat in past coverage. Somebody said that he's been all right, but just to watch him get drummed by Max Crosby makes me feel a little different. And while it's better than last year, still, it's more that Trevor is getting rid of the ball and the offense is helping him getting rid of the ball than Taylor has developed into a strong right tackle. And then it didn't seem like they wanted to upset that position by putting him in at left tackle in the middle of the game. Maybe they do that after they watched the film of who they did put in there last year's. Second round pick, Walker Little. Now he's got plenty of size 6739 is what he's listed at from Stanford. Sounds great in theory. They want to have somebody with a second round resume as your swing tackle. However, he did not look at all ready for the past rush that the Cowboys were throwing at him. And really there was a couple of good escapes and Trevor was just really getting rid of the ball after Cam Robinson went out to mask the fact that Michael was getting after him. The Cowboys knew that they had a Waldo on the line now, and that could be something that other teams scheme towards in the future and could end up ultimately hurting the Jag's chances to go to the playoffs overall because it really was that bad for Walker Little. Trevor had one of the dangdest escapes I've ever seen during that time. He shifted out and ran away from a little bit of the pressure. Everything from that point on for Trevor was on the move and was way more difficult after that. So good news. Cam Robinson can absolutely come back from a torn meniscus. That's one of the more benign injuries for a knee injury these days, especially on someone that you want to show improvements himself either. He hasn't been just an all out, perfect left tackle all year, but he is infinitely better than Walker Little, has gotten better every year and can be a devastating run blocker when he can get his hands on guys because he's freaking huge and strong. So to have him out for the rest of the year is a really bad blow for the Jacksonville Jaguars, and that's something that can't be underlined enough with these teams that get into the playoffs. This is a war of attrition. The teams that are in are kind of in, and now it's just going to be a question of who can stay on the field because there's a lot of plays in most guys ledgers right now and the bumps and bruises do add up, even if it's not really bad serious injury that you're playing through. So the Jaguars aren't alone in this, but some injuries are worse than others, and this one could end up being a really bad one, especially when the Jaguars have been really leaning on the vertical passing to get the job done and to get chunk plays to move this offense. Less time to set up those routes and allow these guys to get open could be a big impediment. But Trevor did a good job of managing it in this game to end it, even though it was the defense that ended up finishing things. It's just is everything going to be a lot harder now. And what does that do to the Jaguars down the stretch? The Jaguars have very winnable games to end the year. The jets have been tough and can rush the past. They also lost Q Williams in their game. So that takes the cream off of their coffee for that defense, because part of their thing was getting pressure up the middle in a middle class Aaron Donald type way, which is really important and can be devastating for a defense because it flushes the quarterback out to your edge guys. And just really pressure right up the middle is one of the hardest things to deal with as a quarterback, especially when it's a guy of Q size that can move like that. And then the Jaguars have the Texans, who have been frisky recently and took the Cowboys and Chiefs to their limits, but ultimately don't want to win their games in the end. I think if you hook them up to a lie detector and I would expect that the Jaguars could win that game, and then finally, if they are able to win those games, they'll be able to play Tennessee regardless of what Tennessee does, straight up for the division because they won this game. They would have the tiebreaker at that point regardless of who was up or who was down at that time. Now, things could get more complicated for Tennessee if they lose games between now and then, but still, cool thing for the Jaguars to have their own destiny in their hands. Also, with all this, I'm not trying to be extremely negative, I just really didn't like the way that injury looked, and I don't want everybody to be a little bit more surprised if the Jaguars are a little bit more out of sorts when we see them next time. Because of what happened here, we didn't get a very big sample size of what they're able to do without Cam. And I know I used a lot of the time on that, and I don't want to gloss over how good Zay Jones looked and the thoughts I have about having him and Christian Kirk out there stretching the defense. Evan Ingram building on his big day, not quite the same day, but having some good catches in there and being a functional part of the offense. There's a lot of good things going here that I don't want to gloss over, but mainly this does feel like a Trevor thing, and not having that same protection for Trevor does give me some pause here on the Cowboys side. There's definitely some reasons for pause. Walk off touchdowns are always devastating, especially in a game where you're up so much with five minutes to go in the third quarter. You don't expect a team that can pass rush like the Cowboys to give up that type of lead. Before we get into the failings of the Cowboys on this day, I do want to say that it was really encouraging to see Tyrone Smith out there. Terrence Steele had been really good for the Cowboys and I thought had really come into his own as a run blocker and pass blocker for a guy that hadn't been able to stay healthy at Texas Tech. He remade his body and really turned him into something. So to see the torn ACL not great for the Cowboys and especially disappointing for him. Good news is I have no doubt he'll be back and I've got my guns up for his return. Normally you don't have somebody replacing your tackle that is of such a quality as Tyrone Smith. I think Tyrone is a future hall of Famer and he might not have played at a hall of Fame level today, but to have him come in instead of Josh Ball means everything. Walker Little and Josh Ball looked very similar while they were out there. They were overmatched in both the movement and strength department, it would seem. While we didn't get to see Tyrone the whole time, he was on a quote unquote pitch count. He ended up playing 54 of the 75 snaps for the Cowboys offense. And really, it's also nice to have Jason Peters as a backup plan at guard or tack as well. But there was a couple of plays where it did cost the Cowboys to not have Tyrone Smith in there for the full amount of the game. Jason wasn't absolutely terrible, but he's kind of catching these guys and getting driven back into DAC a little bit too much. Whereas Tyrone holds his ground and might not be moving at peak Tyrone levels, but still the strength is there and he's able to get in front of people and stay in front of people in what could be an elite way once he's settled in. Despite being able to replace Terrence Steele with Tyrone Smith, it's still a pretty tough blow. With Terrence Steele you could have moved Tyler Smith into guard and had four pretty elite linemen and Tyler beat issue is at least average, probably a plus guy in the end and he's been playing all year, which provides stability as well. So obviously it would be optimal to have been able to pull that move. They'd already been kind of working Tyler Smith in at guard a little bit with the second team in garbage time or just throughout the game. They might bring in Jason Peters to play left tackle to give them a different look, but with the way it works out, you're not having to displace Tyler Smith either, who had a pretty good game. There was only one time where it felt like Tyler really got blown up into DAC and he did give up the pressure there, but overall he's been a godsend for this team and had that pick not worked out, I think the Cowboys would be in a really bad way. The good news is having Tyrone back doesn't put them in such a bad way with the losing of Terrence Steele and it just made me feel a lot more comfortable to see him out there with his big bad self. Hopefully that can remain. He's had a huge problem staying healthy and now the Cowboys are going to have to rely on him more than ever. But still having a side with Zach martin and Tyrone Smith opens up a lot of possibilities as well. Seems like we've been running a lot towards Tyler Smith and his side with good reason because he's a good run blocker. But to add this element where you can run behind Zack to maintain the element where you can run behind Zach Martin and now Tyrone Smith instead of Terrence Steele should keep things more status quo than it normally would and attack a loss situation. As we just talked about with the Jaguars and of course the Tarrant Steel loss is pretty bad, but I don't think that it's anything compared to the loss of Anthony Brown. Dalton Bland is one thing, I don't mind him too much, even though he was targeted heavily in this game and didn't do too bad. Seven of his twelve targets were caught and whatnot, but I don't think that ultimately he's the biggest problem here. I mean, losing Jordan, having Jordan Lewis in there would probably be better, but Dalton has been making plays at the very least if he hasn't been, and clearly the Jaguars were targeting him, but also it's because Christian Kirk works out of the slot. The bigger problem was probably Kelvin Joseph, aka boss man Fat. As I mentioned earlier, it's not like they went out of their way to target him, but the Zay Jones touchdown was nearly entirely his fault. He got really badly beat by Zay Jones down the field to make that touchdown happen. A truly highlight play by bothe and Trevor and the call itself. Right. But still, despite being really talented and having the physical tools to hold up, I'm just not sure that he has enough experience at this point to know where to be all the time and teams know that. And when you have a cornerback, the caliber of Trayvon Digs at the other side, you are going to have to have somebody on the other side that isn't a complete waste of space over there or that isn't easily fooled and targeted in that way as well. And it kind of seems like Kelvin is that guy for the Cowboys at this time. He took the benching at halftime and they brought in Nayshon Wright. Nayshawn lacks experience as well, but has tremendous height for a cornerback and can really tackle. The question is, how well is he going to hold up in coverage too? And will teams be targeting him and Dalton for the rest this year? It's kind of like we talked about with the Cam Robinson thing and now Walker Little is a target for teams. This other quarterback spot, and the slot, for that matter are where teams are going to look going forward. And if you can continue to work those guys and get balls out quickly on them, that takes away from the past rush, who just hasn't seemed to be the same either in the last couple of weeks as the cowboys have been sputtering. Micah looked better, but it still feels like he's not 100%. And for the Cowboys to really, truly do what they need to do in the playoffs, he's going to have to be the facsimile of modern day Lt that he was in the beginning of the year. On the offensive side, we've talked about the Tyrone part of it. It was encouraging up until the very end where the ball goes off Noah Brown's hands and into the hands of the defense. Everything else up into that point offensively, not everything that play call to throw the ball deep where we could have done something a little bit more vanilla and ran out more clock or just thrown a pass that wasn't all the way down the field, when you don't need all of those yards, you just need the ten. At that point, that was extremely curious, and let me tell you with no doubt in my mind that it has a lot of people giving the side eye to Mike McCarthy, who seems to have a very Cowboysque decision tree when it comes to these things. That means that a lot of times the calls don't make a ton of sense, which has led me to believe, and part of the Zenlike approach that I have to this game revolves around him in that if he screws this up, then the Cowboys are going to go to Sean Payton. Okay? That's the stakes that we're at. We don't win the Super Bowl, we lose this playoff game in any sort of fashion that has any sort of Mike McCarthy bad decision stink on it. And that's my expectation is that we're going to take the Sean Payton plunge, which I would gladly take on because not only does it feel like the decision making on the Mike McCarthy side is a little wonky, but it also feels like the timing of when the Cowboys run things, at times it kind of leans to Kelly Moore not having all the experience as a play caller and being still kind of green compared to a lot of the guys that are calling plays for teams. I think a lot of the things the Cowboys do are innovative, so I struggle with this part of it. But the fact that both of them seem to think that that play call was a good idea at the time, it just puts everything in question. And it's funny that Noah Brown deflection and one bad decision color this game so deeply. There's plenty of other fingers to be pointed here, but those are the two that really stuck out to me. Zach, I thought outside of that play where I really didn't think it was his fault, and the Cowboys would have had a first down at midfield where they only have to score a field goal and ultimately Noah Brown can't come up with the catch. And it's the second time in as many weeks that a ball has gone off of Noah brown's hands and into the arms of a receiver and it ends up costing the Cowboys. They were able to get over it last time, but this time it was just the wrong time. And to the Jaguars credit, they were able to take advantage and return the touchdown and get the win and put themselves in position to be where they are. Good thing for the Cowboys is they still accomplished the same thing they would have accomplished by getting the win, but can't do things like this. You can't have mistakes like this when you're not an overwhelming juggernaut, when Micah is not playing like Lt, when you don't have a dominant offensive line. Exactly. You have a good offensive line. Those are mistakes that you can't afford to make. Your margins aren't wide enough to be able to do Cowboys things and still win the game. And there wasn't a whole ton of Cowboys stuff up front. The passes were on time, the offense looked good, and everything seemed to be gelling correctly. It's just you can't have inconsistent plays from some of these guys that you're counting on. The thing is, Noah Brown makes a bunch of big plays during the game and then that one little mistake sets the Cowboys back and costs the Cowboys the win. I know nobody is crying for the Cowboys outside of their own fan base, and I still consider the Cowboys a contender despite this game. They had a lot of opportunities to put it away and very well could do so on the next try. Hopefully they learn from this. Every failing is an opportunity to learn and get better. The good news is this wasn't a one and out game. You didn't lose any standing here, really. And with no jalen hurts coming up because he sprained his shoulder, you don't really have to show everything in this game either. And hey, maybe they go on a little streak here as far as Eagles go and lose some games, maybe you can get back in it. But in the end, I think the Cowboys are kind of locked into playing whoever is the NFC South champion and going from there. My hope is that one of the other NFC South teams can take out Tom Brady, but after watching Desmond Ritter play Andy Dalton, I find it a little unlikely that and of course, don't forget Sam Darnold being the other quarterback in your division. And I don't think that the Tampa Bay is going to blow this, but everybody being one game back from you and you playing like pretty bad overall. Not Tom himself necessarily, but the team overall with Tom not really playing great either, doesn't mean that that's locked up as far as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers winning that division either. It's just man, Ritter looked really bad and didn't seem like a plus athlete, as it turns out. But I digress. I was shocked by that, but I don't want to get into that on the Cowboys Jaguars games right now. So there you go. Was I upset enough with the Cowboys win for you? Did that make you feel good? It didn't make me feel good to have the loss at the time. But I didn't feel too bad when I watched the game over again when I watched the coach's film. I should have videos coming out on this game. Trevor should lead the shorts for the morning, and then I should have the podcast out a little bit later on Tuesday. Breaking through the fourth wall for you just a little bit. Who could care less, I would imagine. So I'll leave it there. Look for more games. This is game number three. Should have a couple more for the week, at least one. I've been hitting four when I've been doing the individual games so far, but I'm ahead of schedule right now, so we'll have ambition for more. So look for that. Look for more videos and have a great rest of your day.