The Jacksonville Jaguars(1-5) have done it! Jacksonville snapped their 20-game losing streak and won for the first time since Week 1 of the 2020 season as they came from behind to defeat the Dolphins(1-5) 23-20 in London on Sunday after a 53-yard field by kicker Matthew Wright with no time left on the clock.
In addition, both Jaguars head coach Urban Meyer and number one pick Trevor Lawrence get their first victory in the NFL.
“It’s special,” Lawrence said postgame about his first NFL victory. “Obviously, we’ve had a rough My first win, out here, like it’s just hard, hard to even imagine.
“It’s awesome. I’m just really proud of this group. We decided earlier this week, we’re going to win this game, and we talked about it on the sideline, there’s going to be so many ups and downs throughout every game you’ve just got to keep playing, and we did that and found a way to win.”
Meyer added: “Well, we needed a win. Someone asked me last week if we were desperate for a win, and we are desperate for a win.”
Lawrence became the first rookie quarterback in NFL history to win a game in London. He completed 25-of-41 passes for 319 yards and one touchdown, marking the most passing yards by a Jaguars quarterback in their eight international games. With less than 2 minutes remaining in the fourth quarter, Lawrence completed all three of his passing attempts for 20 yards to set up the game-winning field goal attempt.
Meyer was impressed by what he saw out of Lawrence and Wright.
“There was a lot of things to fix,” Meyer said. “But you saw a young quarterback make a big-time play at the biggest time of the game, and then a young kicker that we just signed a couple weeks ago pop two 50-plus yarders, so it was a great win.”
Initially, with the game tied at 20 with five seconds left, Meyer and the Jaguars were going to throw a hail mary, but Meyer and OC Darrell Bevell changed their minds and Lawrence connected with Laviska Shenault on a nine-yard pass with one second left, which gave Wright a better shot to make the game-winning field goal.
After the game, Meyer explained why he changed his mind.
“We were going to do a Hail Mary, or one of the Big Ben plays just a jump ball in the end zone, and I kept staring at the clock, and we practice this every week, and it’s called slider,” he said. “It’s where you get the ball, and we usually say six seconds, five seconds, and we told our quarterback and Laviska, and I had the official right there, and I said, as soon as he catches and goes down, time-out. He caught it, time-out, and there was still that one second left. We practice that quite a bit.”
It turned out to be a great call by the Jaguars to go with the short pass, and now Jacksonville gets their first win of the season. Hopefully, for them, they can build off this victory as they head into their bye week.
