Written by AJ Olona

Thursday, Sept. 24 at 8:20 p.m. ET

NFL Network

SPREAD: Jaguars, -3.0

Week 3 brings another interesting, if not somewhat unspectacular, Thursday Night Football matchup. After the Week 2 matchup between the winless teams of Ohio, we will be treated to the matchup of the mediocre teams of Florida. All jokes aside, this matchup should be fairly interesting. There’s always something fun about watching teams that aren’t playing for much go at it. The Jaguars are 1-1 and are coming off of a very close loss to the Tennessee Titans. Opening the season facing two divisional teams, while also seemingly tanking on the year, the Jaguars have been competitive. They shocked the Indianapolis Colts in Week 1 when undrafted rookie running back James Robinson emerged as a true, definitive starter for the team and when Gardner Minshew completed 95% of his passes while torching the Colts pass defense with 3 touchdowns. Minshew and Robinson were able to continue their momentum into Week 2 against the Tennessee Titans. Robinson rushed for his first touchdown in the league and went for over 100 rushing yards while Minshew threw for 339 yards and 3 touchdowns.

Despite everyone in the football world believing that the Jaguars were going to be one of, if not the worst, no teams in the NFL, the Jaguars have been able to surprise a lot of people. However, if they struggle against the 0-2 Miami Dolphins, we can once again start talking about Trevor Lawrence playing down in Jacksonville in 2021.

The Miami Dolphins however are struggling to find their footing. Waiting in the wings is number 5 overall pick from this past draft, QB Tua Tagovailoa. The Dolphins have opened the season with two straight losses to divisional opponents in the New England Patriots and the Buffalo Bills. The Dolphins are one of the few teams that have decided to allow fans to attend their games in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Hard Rock stadium is allowing up to 13,000 fans to attend their games, and the Dolphins are struggling to bring in any fans, even with the limited basis. Is this because the Dolphins are that unappealing to their own fan base? The Dolphins may be forced to make a change at quarterback sooner than they anticipated. Ryan Fitzpatrick is not playing bad football, but it seems like the Miami fan base is already ready to see what the future of their team will look like going forward.

It is still too early in the season to get a good grasp of how this Jaguars defense will look as a unit. Against the Colts in Week 1, they were able to stifle the Colts offense for the most part. The strength of the Colts offense coming into the 2020 season was supposed to be their offensive line and their rushing attack. However, against the Jaguars, that was not the case. Running backs for the Colts rushed for a mere 76 yards on the day. While Philip Rivers was able to throw for 363 yards, he was not super effective. The Jaguars were able to force him to turn the ball over twice late in the game and held him to just 1 touchdown that came early on in the 2nd quarter of the game.

Against the Tennessee Titans, the Jaguars looked like a completely different defensive unit. Ryan Tannehill threw the ball around with no push back. Ryan Tannehill threw for 4 touchdowns on the day and 239 yards. The Titans were able to put up 33 points on the board and RB Derrick Henry ran for 84 yards. The question heading into Thursday night will be which defense shows up. It would be a good bet to say that the Jaguars won’t have a similar performance to last week.

The Dolphins on the other hand have shown that they are still not going to be a top tier defense this year. Despite all of the money that the Dolphins invested in on the defensive side of things in the offseason, they have still yet to step up. After shelling out top end money to CB Byron Jones, LB Kyle Van Noy, edge rushers Shaq Lawson and Emmanuel Ogbah, and Safety Clayton Fejedelem, fans expected this defense to be top tier. You would expect that handing out over $115,000,000 worth of guarantees in free agency would result in better defensive play.

In Week 1, the New England Patriots were able to do whatever they wanted. Cam Newton did not have to throw the ball to be successful against the Dolphins. In fact, he only threw the ball for 155 yards because he only had to throw the ball 19 times. Cam Newton took what the defense gave him and was able to consistently find running lanes against the Dolphins, rushing for 75 yards and 2 touchdowns on just 15 carries. Things didn’t get much better for the Dolphins in Week 2 when they faced off against the Buffalo Bills. The Dolphins defense helped Josh Allen look like an MVP candidate, allowing him to throw the ball for 417 yards and 4 touchdowns. For a defense that employs two of the highest paid corners in the NFL in Xavien Howard and Byron Jones, that should never happen, especially with a QB that many consider to be average at best. Bills wide outs Stefon Diggs had 8 catches for 153 yards and a touchdown while John Brown was able to chip in 82 yards and a touchdown as well. The Dolphins need to figure things out on the defensive side of the ball quickly, or else they will regret their defensive spending spree rather quickly.

As of Tuesday, the only Dolphins player that has yet to practice is CB Byron Jones, which will only make things worse for that putrid passing defense. For the Jaguars, starting center Brandon Linder has not practiced this week either after leaving Week 2’s game with a knee injury and is questionable for Sunday’s game. With other players on the injury report so far this week, the only player in real jeopardy of missing the Thursday Night Football game for the Jaguars is Linder.

SHAWN’S PREDICTION: Jaguars 21 - 17

AJ’S PREDICTION: Jaguars 30 - 17

JAKE’S PREDICTION: Jaguars 35 - 14

CADE’S PREDICTION: Jaguars 24 - 20

DAGEN’S PREDICTION: Miami 17 - 10

DAVID’S PREDICTIONS: Jaguars 27 - 17

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