Jacksonville Jaguars showed 'a lot of quit,' couldn't overcome adversity Sunday vs. Bears

LONDON — Jacksonville Jaguars safety Andre Cisco took a beat to find the words to explain the team's 35-16 loss to the Chicago Bears on Sunday. But when he finally found them, he didn't mince anything.

"I just feel like it was ... How should I say this? A lot of quit," Cisco told Action Sports Jax in the locker room on Sunday when asked if the loss was as bad as it looked. "In a situation like that, you can feel when we're playing as one and when we're not and it felt very early in the game, maybe out of halftime, that we weren't playing as one."

How the Jaguars played against Chicago was "extremely" concerning and "dangerous," Cisco noted.

The Bears took a little while to rev up, punting on their first two drives before throwing an interception on their fourth drive with a touchdown sandwiched in between.

There was nothing Jacksonville could do to stop them after the dam broke. Chicago rattled off four touchdowns to put the Jaguars out of their misery going into and during the second half of the game.

"We laying our bodies on the line, and you gotta understand when you out there, you're really playing for your brother, you putting guys in vulnerable positions, whether that's physically or just from a career aspect," said Cisco.

"Like, take care of each other when we out there, at least, even when things start to get bad. So yeah, just not a good product at all."

The loss drops the Jaguars to 1-5 on the year, and the reaction from Cisco, head coach Doug Pederson and quarterback Trevor Lawrence encapsulated the dread of the year as a whole and perhaps spells signs of dread for what's to come over the next 11 games.

Jaguars struggling to overcome adversity, don't have answers

Whenever adversity struck, the Jaguars fell down the rabbit hole and couldn't get out.

Pederson called the situation "obvious" after the game.

"Right now, those are things that are plaguing us. It's the mistakes and then being able to overcome the mistake. Those are things that we have to obviously take a look at and correct," said Pederson.

The Jaguars committed eight penalties, tied for a season-high (Week 1, Miami) and had two costly turnovers, a fumble on the first play out of halftime and an interception three plays into their first drive of the fourth quarter.

A defensive holding penalty kept a drive alive for the Bears during the third quarter, allowing Chicago to keep chewing up the clock before scoring a touchdown on the first play of the fourth quarter. The Jaguars went down 28-10 at that point with very little hope left for a victory.

"Again, taking nothing away from the players. They're playing hard. They're putting everything out on the field. We keep talking. We'll just keep showing them," Pederson said.

"We had the 12 men on the field, and there was a substitution change. I put that on us as coaches. That's on us. So, everybody has a piece of this. It's not just coaching, not just players. It's all of us, and that's where it has to start."

Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence said that mistakes happen, but it's about how the team overcomes those.

"There's going to be mistakes, and we had two turnovers today, which didn't help us. It's harder to win that way, but you have to be able to overcome stuff, too. You can't just say, Oh, we don't want to turn the ball over. So what happens when you do turn it over? Do you just stop playing?" he asked.

Cisco alluded to that possibility for at least some of the team Sunday.

"There's no excuse for lack of effort. Like, that's literally the least you could do is come out and give effort. I'm saying that to myself, too. That's always going to be the mindset. Come out, give your best. If it's not perfect, it's not perfect."

Trevor Lawrence says it'll never be 'perfect' but the team has to find a way

Before being asked about it, Lawrence mentioned the word "perfect" three times during his postgame press conference.

The context was about the team's inability to make plays after an adverse situation. Playing "perfect" in football isn't a fair expectation. It'll likely never happen, but when the line is so thin like it was against the Bears, it seems the Jaguars need to do it.

"You can't play that way because you're never going to be perfect," Lawrence said when asked if it felt like the team needs to play perfect or close to perfect to have success.

"Did it feel like that way today? Yes, because it did snowball. Unfortunately, it happened today, and we let those mistakes kind of accumulate and just pile on, but you're never going to play perfect," said Lawrence. "So if you are waiting to play perfect, you're not going to win a lot of games. I think as a team we do have to be better at overcoming adversity."

The first quarter of the game felt like a team that was playing about as close to perfect as they could. Jacksonville's defense forced the Bears to go three-and-out on their first two drives of the game and the team's offense scored a field goal.

It wasn't perfect. Receiver Gabe Davis dropped a would-be touchdown. But, it was close and good enough to win. Starting fast was something the Jaguars have struggled to do on both sides of the ball all season.

They couldn't overcome what happened afterward.

"So we did that today, and then we still had some of the mistakes creep in," Lawrence said, alluding to the team's fast start and mistakes that followed. "Whatever it takes just to play a full 60 minutes as clean as you can and if you do make a mistake, just go make the next play. You don't have to do more than your job."

Lawrence pointed to his own issues, too, when talking about overcoming adversity.

"I know as a quarterback sometimes when one play doesn't go right, the next play I've had — it's happened a ton in my career where I try to make the play the next time and make it worse because I'm trying to do too much and I'm not just doing my job," he said. "So I think that that is a big part of it too what we have to do as a team and control that aspect of it."

Jaguars owner Shad Khan recently said to the Times-Union that he remains supportive of the players, coaching staff and general manager Trent Baalke. Pederson said after the game Sunday that he feels he still has that support. Lawrence said after the game that he still believes in his head coach.

All of the votes of confidence won't matter, though, if the Jaguars can't find a way to get out of their way.

Cisco said that everything comes down to Sunday. Practicing well, studying hard and talking are all fine, but it comes down to playing well on Sundays.

"It's a Sunday thing, like it's not a schedule thing anymore. That's dead. So, at this point, everybody just got to understand that Sunday is the time where you show what you mean, you mean what you say" said Cisco.

Demetrius Harvey is the Jacksonville Jaguars reporter for the Florida Times-Union. You can follow him on X,  formerly known as Twitter, at @Demetrius82 .

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This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Jacksonville Jaguars showed 'a lot of quit,' couldn't overcome adversity Sunday vs. Bears