Jaguars get hit with bad news before divisional matchup vs. Texans that they’re unintentionally prepared for
The Jaguars will be without Brian Thomas Jr., but will have Jakobi Meyers.
Coming off a huge win over the Las Vegas Raiders, the Jacksonville Jaguars knew they would get some bad injury news before their game against the Houston Texans. However, this news is not the type of news they wanted, but they’re already prepared for it.
According to Adam Schefter of ESPN, wide receiver Brian Thomas Jr. will miss Sunday’s game with a high ankle sprain. Sure, Thomas Jr. has struggled this year, proving the sophomore slump is a real thing. However, they are still going to be without their best receiver and a guy who can go off at any moment.
But one move they recently made has the Jaguars unintentionally prepared for this.
Jaguars will have one new wide receiver in the lineup in Jakobi Meyers
At the trade deadline on Tuesday, the Jaguars traded with the Raiders, where they sent a fourth and sixth rounder to Vegas for Meyers, a 1,000-yard receiver last season. He’s on an expiring contract, so this is clearly a move the Jaguars made to see if they can go all in.
It helps that they made this move pretty much at the same time that they’re wide receiver room gets decimated with injuries. Now, Meyers is going to be sporting teal, but how much will we see him in teal on the field on Sunday?
“That’s the exact challenge, the balance of how much he can handle, how quickly he can get some of the formations down, the timing obviously of practice and some of the—just throwing on air with Trev [QB Trevor Lawrence] and, getting some reps that way,” head coach Liam Coen said on Wednesday.
“But it’ll really come down to just, alright, what are the things specifically that we want to get him in the flow of the game. You want to get him opportunities, but also just to go play as a Jaguar, not necessarily every time he’s in it’s something that he has to go and do. You just want to make sure there’s a balance there. So that’ll be a process throughout this week and through each part of the plan. Okay, normal D-and-D [down and distance], third downs, red zone, how much in those areas can you give him? And that’s the balance for sure.”
Meyers was already going to be on the field if Thomas could go on Sunday. It wasn’t going to be much, but he was going to have to play because of other injuries, and not knowing a completely different offense yet was what would keep him from getting on the field.
Now, with Thomas out, we may see even more of Meyers than the Jaguars anticipated originally. And that may mean the Jags go with a much more vanilla offense. Only time will tell, but they will need all hands on deck against one of the best defenses in the league.
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