Personnel exec, former QB offer thoughts on struggles of Trevor Lawrence

The poor play of Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence over the season's first four weeks has generated headlines and resulted in rumors suggesting team owner Shad Khan could fire head coach Doug Pederson as soon as this coming Monday. 

Mike Sando of The Athletic recently spoke with an unnamed personnel executive who thinks Lawrence's teammates are at least somewhat to blame for all that went wrong during the club's 0-4 start to the campaign. 

"They play up front like they can’t wait until the play is over — tough to watch," that executive said about Jacksonville's offensive line. "The quarterback is missing easy throws. There’s bad body language. Just in general, offensively, a downtrodden group."

Christian Gonzales of the NFL's website previously mentioned how Lawrence dealt with a knee injury, a high ankle sprain, a concussion and a sprained right shoulder last season as the 2023 Jaguars went from 8-3 to 9-8. Despite that collapse, Jacksonville signed Lawrence to a five-year contract extension worth up to $275M with $142M fully guaranteed this past offseason.

Lawrence has now lost nine consecutive starts going back to last year and largely performed like a below-average quarterback throughout the opening month of the ongoing season. According to Pro Football Reference, he began Thursday ranked 23rd in the league with a 44.4 adjusted QBR, 28th with a 38.1% passing success rate, 32nd with a 53.3% completion percentage and 25th with an average of 182.3 passing yards per game. His four touchdown passes have him tied for 17th in that category. 

Per Sando, former NFL quarterback and current analyst J.T. O’Sullivan noted how Lawrence "hopped backward unnecessarily while throwing" during Jacksonville's 24-20 loss to the Houston Texans this past Sunday. In the Week 3 defeat against the Buffalo Bills, Lawrence was guilty of a bad overthrow that resulted in an interception.

"When someone is so consistently spraying the ball and they are a guy who was a No. 1 overall (draft choice), I almost always feel like there is some element of, I don’t want to say the yips, but some sort of mechanical, fundamental thing," O’Sullivan added about what he saw from Lawrence's game film. 

Lawrence has looked so lost at times that Pederson hinted after the 47-10 loss to Buffalo that he could eventually consider benching the 24-year-old in favor of backup Mac Jones. Lawrence will next get an opportunity to silence such chatter when the winless Jaguars host the 2-2 Indianapolis Colts this Sunday. 

As of Thursday afternoon, DraftKings Sportsbook listed Jacksonville as a 2.5-point favorite against Indianapolis.