Written by George Diaz at Orlando Sentinel.com
The NFL is never big on participation medals and attaboys. If this were a Pop Warner deal, the Jacksonville Jaguars would have felt great about Sunday afternoon. Coach Gus Bradley would have gathered the boys and taken them to Chuck E. Cheese for pizza and ice cream.
“Yeah team!” he would have shouted as Blake grabbed a slice of pepperoni.
Instead, all they got was a little egg in the face.
“No,” Jags quarterback Blake Bortles answered succinctly when asked if he felt good about anything on a day when the Jags lost to one of the best teams in the league as well as one of its best quarterbacks.
What hurt in particular was a botched fourth-and-one play in the closing seconds against the Green Bay Packers when Bortles threw a quick hitter to Allen Hurns on the right flank. But Hurns could not shake cornerback Damarious Randall behind the line of scrimmage, and the Packers held on for a 27-23 victory in a steamy EverBank Field.
“It’s fourth-and-one, so I’ve just got to find a way,” Hurns said. “This one hurts.”
The Jags were in scramble mode anyway, out of timeouts with 16 seconds left when the ball was snapped. Regardless, it all becomes part of the water-cooler conversation for Monday morning quarterbacks.
“Hey, the Jaguars played great!”
“Hey, the Jaguars still lost!”
“We will not accept defeat,” Jaguars coach Gus Bradley said. “There were other plays in the game.”
A bunch of them were made by Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who went NASCAR with a few “Shake and Bake” moments in the pocket, scrambling and wiggling free to turn potential sacks into big plays or TDs.
One of them included a nifty scramble inside pocket and finding Jordy Nelson for a 6-yard score in the first half.
Rodgers finished with just 199 yards passing but threw for two scores and ran in for another on — you guessed it — a scramble.
But this all goes back to the Jaguars, and a season of hope and dreams. We hear that ad nauseam during training camps across the country. Everyone is making the playoffs and then going to the Super Bowl.
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