Super Bowl-winning Eagles coach Doug Pederson is among the critics second-guessing Doug Marrone's Jaguars for not stepping on the Patriots' neck when they had the chance in the AFC Championship Game. But don't count Tony Romo of CBS Sports among the naysayers second guessing Marrone's conservative coaching in the team's 24-20 loss to the Patriots last January.
"When they look back, obviously you want to be a little more aggressive. I’m always under the impression that if you have a shot at something big, you take your shot," Romo said. "But I think sometimes people think taking their shot might be playing the percentages of what you feel the most trust in."
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Romo called Jags vs. Patriots along with play-by-play partner Jim Nantz. After Pederson wrote in his new book that the Jags' conservative approach inspired him to go for broke, Sporting News asked Romo about it during CBS's NFL Media Day last week.
First, let's hit the rewind button to that day at Gillette Stadium.
With 55 seconds still remaining in the first half, Marrone's visiting Jags were leading Bill Belichick's home Pats 14-10. The Jags had the ball and two timeouts left. Quarterback Blake Bortles, yes Blake Bortles, was outplaying Tom Brady, who was coping with a stitched-up throwing hand. Bortles had already thrown one touchdown while big Jags running back Leonard Fournette rumbled for another. With Pats tight end Rob Gronkowski out after a nasty hit, and the Jags boasting the second-best pass defense in the league, it looked like upset city in New England.
Then came a key turning point in the game. Rather than trying to score another TD, or at least a field goal, Marrone opted to run out the clock by taking a knee on two consecutive plays. The Jags only managed to score six points in the second half. A clutch Brady engineered two fourth quarter TD drives to propel the Pats to Super Bowl 52, where they lost 41-33 against Pederson's Eagles. Just like that, the Jags' first trip to the Super Bowl was not to be.
In his new book "Fearless: How an Underdog Becomes a Champion," Pederson wrote that the Jaguars' cautious play-calling had him "screaming at the TV," according to ProFootballTalk.
I was there thinking, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me right now,'” Pederson writes, via Vito Stellino. “It made me mad because Jacksonville had New England right where they wanted them. I was screaming at the TV in my office. When they knelt right before halftime, inside I was like, ‘I’ll never do that.’ It fueled me. They could have least tried for a field goal. They took it out of their quarterback’s hands, and they didn’t give to their big back Leonard Fournette. I thought, ‘If they lose this game, this is why.’ Sure enough they would go on to lose the game.”
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Pederson swore he wouldn't make the same mistake. His Eagles gambled on several big plays in the NFC Championship Game, routing the Vikings 38-7. On 4th and goal, with time running out in the first half of Super Bowl 52 two weeks later, the gutsy Pederson passed on a field goal. Instead, he aggressively called the "Philly Special" trick play that saw tight end Trey Burton throw a TD pass to QB Nick Foles.
Who's to say how cornerback Jalen Ramsey and the suffocating Jags defense would have fared against Foles, the Eagles backup QB for much of the season? Instead, Foles strafed the Pats for 373 yards and three TDs. The Eagles won their first Super Bowl. The Jags could only wonder what might have been.
Publicly defending Marrone might seem surprising for Romo, the gambling former Cowboys QB. But Romo went easy on the Jags while calling the game for CBS. Hindsight is 20-20, Romo noted, especially in the NFL where victory has a thousand fathers and defeat is an orpahn. It's easy to forget some of the other strange things that happened during the game.
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Consider this. While the Jags were flagged for six penalties and 98 yards, the Pats only got one penalty for 10 yards. The talented Jags secondary was called for two key pass interfernce calls — after drawing only five pass interference flags during the regular season. One questionable 32-yard call against cornerback A.J. Bouye was jeered as a "pity flag" on social media. Still, it enabled the Pats to score their only TD of the first half. When the Jags took a knee, they went into the locker winning by only four points.
Then there was the mysterious referee whistle that blew dead a game-clinching fumble return by Myles Jack that would have likely given the Jags a 27-10 lead. Why were the NFL refs seemingly fraternizing with Brady on the field at Gillette, asked many TV viewers on Twitter?
Like many young playoff teams, the Jags learned a hard lesson. If you have the veteran Brady and Belichick on the ropes, you have to put a stake through their hearts to beat them. In the end, Marrone trusted his more talented unit — the defense — to win the game, Romo said.
"Before the season started, in an AFC title game, would you tell them to lean on their defense or their offense?" Romo said. "I just think you have to trust."