A Look Back: Patriots-Jaguars 2017 AFC Championship

The 2017 AFC Championship was a dogfight down to the end, with the young and hungry Jags pushing the Patriots to the very limit. Really, the Jags exposed the Patriots in a way that the Eagles would build off of in Super Bowl 52. They had quite a few chances to put the game away, but the Pats do what they always do, hang on and make the key plays at the end.

Despite some limitations of Blake Bortles, the Jags are one of the teams vying to dethrone the Patriots from AFC supremacy, and they certainly have the defensive pieces to make it happen. But this is a different Patriots team than the one that played last January and that includes both good reasons and bad reasons.

What can we determine from last year’s matchup? That this will be a test for the 2018 Pats that truly tells if they’ve put the problems of last season behind them.

The Patriots had a slow start to the game, falling into a 14-3 hole. The Jags sniffed out most of the underneath stuff Tom Brady, with a stitched-up hand, loves to rely on. Much of the offense relied shot plays to Cooks, or the PI calls that came with them sometimes. It was a true grind-it-out offensive performance and one that will be hard to replicate with entirely new pieces.

The simple fact is that the primary players outside of Brady who helped the Pats win this game are no longer on the team. But the flip side of the coin is that the defense which made just enough plays to win is much improved.

So which side wins?

Danny Amendola was the story of the AFC Championship with seven catches for 84 yards and two touchdowns but even he didn’t come on until the end of the game. Instead it was pretty much the last hurrah for Brandin Cooks who led the team with 100 yards receiving. Dion Lewis threw in 66 total yards of offense himself and after that now-departed trio, no one on the Patriots offense did much of anything.

Gronk left with a concussion after one catch, James White had just 26 yards of offense with 15 of them coming on one play. Chris Hogan had two catches for 20 yards. It was bleak after Cooks and Amendola.

So now the spotlight shines on the re-made receivers. Can Phillip Dorsett be the deep and outside threat that Cooks was in this game? Who makes those critical third down plays that Amedola did? Can Burkhead (if not concussed) or (gasp) Sony Michel be more productive on the ground that Dion Lewis was? The contrast between the 2017 and 2018 Patriot offenses will be on full display, not to mention how Trent Brown does against the vaunted speed rusher Yannick Ngakoue?

Defensively, the Pats were off their game most of the day, coming around to make the bare minimum number of plays to win, highlighted by Stephon Gilmore‘s game-sealing pass defense. They had three sacks and eight QB hits but Bortles was often toying with the Pats defense, hitting the underneath players who then picked up big yards after the catch. It was the Achilles Heel of the Patriots defense and the Jags went right after it. Will they do the same with Dont’a Hightower back? With better edge players and more depth at pass rusher?

The Patriots defense should be in far better position to dictate rather than react, especially if they play the same way they did in Week One against the Texans.

This is a fascinating early-season matchup. We’ve seen the young and hungry team looking to prove themselves and announce their arrival with a win over the Patriots, but often those kinds of wins in September ring hollow when the end of the year comes around.

What was most impressive was how polished and in sync the Patriots team looked against the Texans and they’ll need a similar effort to knock off the Jags in the Florida heat. More interesting will be to see who steps up on offense because the Pats will need big things from new players who couldn’t or didn’t do them in last year’s matchup.