The Jaguars have been led to the AFC Championship Game primarily by their defense, but there’s one area where Jacksonville’s offense leads the league: Fourth downs.
Counting the playoffs, the Jaguars have been successful on 12 of 15 fourth-down conversion attempts. That 80 percent success rate is by far the best in the NFL this year. The Jaguars have gone for it on fourth-and-goal twice in this year’s playoffs and have scored touchdowns both times, and without those two touchdowns -- and their success on fourth downs in the regular season -- Jacksonville might not be in the AFC Championship Game.
That’s been largely overlooked in discussions of the Jaguars’ success this season, but the Patriots have noticed. Patriots safety Devin McCourty said coach Bill Belichick has been stressing that the Patriots need to be ready for the Jaguars to go for it during situations when most teams would send the kicking team onto the field.
“Yeah, Bill said that in a meeting the other day, that they are a team who is not scared to go for it on fourth down,” said McCourty, via Mike Reiss of ESPN. “The biggest thing is awareness. We’ve got to know once they get in that territory that we kind of call ‘Cuatro situation,’ that third down is not really third down. We’ve got to be prepared for a play that might gain a couple of yards, but not maybe a first down, but get them close enough to the stick. Whether it’s in a goal-line situation like last week [against the Steelers], or you stop them on third down and you’re going crazy, you’ve got to realize that they’ll line it up and go for it. So, I think it’s more awareness, because at the end of the day we’ve got to execute whatever defense we call. And we’ve got to just be aware of how it might change the play calling and what they’re trying to do.”
The Jaguars are big underdogs heading into New England, but fourth-down conversions are one way an underdog can take a high-risk, high-reward strategy and use it to beat a heavy favorite. Don’t be surprised if the Jaguars go for it a few times on Sunday.