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The days since Jacksonville Jaguars QB Trevor Lawrence last won an NFL game are piling up
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- The days since Jacksonville Jaguars QB Trevor Lawrence last won an NFL game are piling up
It's been 302 days — three days short of 10 months — since Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence has led the team to a victory.
That was a 24-21 decision over the Houston Texans on Nov. 26, 2023. At the time it was huge, the second of back-to-back AFC Divisional wins, atoning for a home loss to the Texans two months earlier, giving the Jags the division lead and sending them into a Monday Night home game against Cincinnati with an 8-3 record, tied with Kansas City for the No. 2 seed in the AFC.
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The Jaguars lost to the Bengals in overtime 34-31. Backup C.J. Beathard had to finish the game after Lawrence went out with an ankle injury.
And nothing has been the same since. The Jaguars have gone 1-8 since then and Lawrence was a spectator during the only victory during that span, watching Beathard toy with the hapless Carolina Panthers .
How many consecutive games has Trevor Lawrence lost?
Monday's 47-10 loss to the Buffalo Bills at Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park, N.Y., was the eighth loss in a row for the Jaguars with Lawrence as the starter, his last five in 2023 and all three games this season.
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All the dismal stats can be recited ad nauseum: Lawrence was 21 of 38 for 178 yards and only his second touchdown pass of the season. He was 10 of 22 or 59 yards in the first half when the Bills (3-0) took a 34-3 halftime lead.
Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence (16) is sacked by Buffalo's Cam Lewis (39) during the second quarter of an NFL game at Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park, N.Y. on Sept. 23.
Lawrence was sacked four times and threw his first interception of the season, a woefully overthrown ball over the head of a wide-open Brian Thomas Jr., when the team was still salvageable.
"You can't miss those," Lawrence said during his post-game news conference of the interception by Damar Hamlin.
Buffalo had the same number of touchdowns in the first half as the Jaguars had first downs and when the teams went to the locker room at the break, Lawrence had four consecutive first-half quarters without producing a touchdown.
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"I have to play well to give ourselves a chance to win ... that's the NFL," Lawrence said. "Disappointing would be an understatement. I thought we had an opportunity, prime time, Monday night, to show who we are."
Perhaps the Jaguars did.
Coach Doug Pederson didn't have any easy answers about Lawrence in the game's aftermath.
"If he's like me, we're all kind of down and not very high," he said. "We've got to keep working and keep pushing and work our way out of it. It's not for lack of effort. Sometimes you have to get out of your own way."
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Trevor Lawrence has been prone to losing streaks in the NFL
But the real numbers, the only numbers that matter, are even worse than any passing statistic when taken with a long view. Lawrence's 0-8 record covering those 302 days is a regression back to his rookie season in 2021 when the Jaguars lost the first five games of the second, then lost eight in a row after beating Miami in London and the Bills at home in a three-game span.
It seems to be part of his pattern as a professional. When Lawrence played high school at Cartersville, Ga., then at Clemson, those teams had a combined 96-4 record. He once won 68 regular-season high school and college games in a row. He knew little except winning.
But while he led the Jaguars to the playoffs in 2022, won a playoff game, and then won eight of his first 11 games last season (giving him a 15-6 record during that span, counting two in the playoffs), he's been more prone to frightful losing streaks.
Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence (16), seen here talking to NFL referee Curtis Blair (74) in Monday's 47-10 loss to the Buffalo Bills, must do something immediately about ending his streak of eight consecutive losses as a starter.
During his most current slide, Lawrence has completed 58.3 percent of his passes for 1,830 yards, 10 touchdowns, nine interceptions and 21 sacks. His passer rating is 76.14.
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Trevor Lawrence, as QB1, will always take most of the blame
The performance of the offensive line of course can be blamed. Injuries to reliable receivers such as Christian Kirk and Evan Engram have deprived Lawrence of players with a strong comfort level. The defense isn't forcing turnovers to give Lawrence short fields.
Not to be discounted could be the never-ending soap opera of the play-calling duties between Pederson and offensive coordinator Press Taylor and how that affects Lawrence.
But "generational quarterbacks," the kind who sign contracts for $275 million over the next five years, are supposed to overcome such obstacles. And in the most bottom-line sports of them all, Lawrence has a 38.3 percent NFL winning percentage as a starter, after a 96.0 percentage in high school and college.
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"We have take all the accountability, all the criticism, all the scrutiny," Lawrence said. "I know I'm not playing as good as I can play. It's hard but it's not that hard and we made it look hard."
Lawrence said the team likely will be thankful it's a short week before playing at Houston on Sunday.
"Watch it [the video], make the corrections and move on as quick as possible," he said. "It's a good week for a short week. We need to move on and flush it. Enough talking. We're not going to talk ourselves into anything. "
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Jaguars QB Trevor Lawrence has now gone 10 months without a victory
