Jacksonville Jaguars and Trevor Lawrence Ready For Cleveland in NFL Season Opener With High Hopes

0:00This is the Lockdown Podcast Network celebrating 10 years of your team every day. Hey, Drake May here. As a pro quarterback, I know I can't do it alone. I have to trust my team, and that goes for my money too, which is why I use Betterment, the trusted investing and savings platform. Their automated investing tools always have my back, just like my old line. Over a million people already trust Betterment to build their wealth, so I know I'm in good company. Building yours at Betterment.com or download the app. Investing involves risk. Performance not guaranteed. Paid client ad. Views may not be representative. See App Store and Google Play reviews. Learn more at Betterment.com slash ambassadors. I expect the Jaguars to win game one Sunday against Cleveland, but it will still matter how they look, and I'll tell you why. You are locked on Jaguars. For daily Jacksonville Jaguars Podcast.

1:01Part of the locked on Podcast Network. Your team every day. What up good folks? I'm Tony Wiggins, the host of the Lockdown Jaguars. Podcast today's episode is brought to you by Fandoo. Get $300 and bonus bets guaranteed when you bet $5 every day for seven days. Join all the action at Fandoo.com. All right, man. Look, let me tell you where we going and where we going to end up at the end. The end of the show we'll talk about how score and how the how matter to the fans. It's still the NFL. That's the middle of the show. And it's go time. Go time it is finally here, man. I'm the tailgate, the hot dogs, the hamburgers, the fans, the teal, the bowl city brigade, gonna circle up and do that thing. It is finally here, man. The preseason is over. We are chomping everybody's chomping at the bit to get going here doing football season as they should be. The NFL has already started.

2:02There are two games that have already been played. It kind of felt like preseason games, man, a little bit. So I'm hoping that the Jaguars game doesn't feel that way. The Patriots and the Seahawks kind of it kind of felt like an old school game because the defenses were hitting. The guys are getting hurt. The same Donald going out of AJ Brown going out. I don't want any of that stuff to even continue to manifest itself here in Jacksonville. And then last night everybody's super bowl favorite. The Rams got Molly walked. That's why I'm second to two. I'm gonna tell you what I told you the other night on the squad show that look, this is still football. These are NFL teams. Do not sit here and just automatically assume that the favorite team is gonna win. But I'm gonna tell you about the Jaguars. They are the favorite team and they are going win. I think they're gonna win. I do think it'll be a very workman like game. Very, very workman like game and it's also gonna give us a chance to see what it feels like to be in the stadium with the capacity at about one third less than it always is.

3:05And that's because there's a construction going on. Now we only have to break this seven times this year obviously because the Jaguars have two, I believe both. Well, let me correct myself. They had nine away games and eight home games and then one of the games that they actually had is in London. They're playing two games in London so that when to make up for when they do open the stadium in 20, 20, 20, 28, all of those games will be here in Jacksonville. But yeah, man, it's gonna be fun. It's gonna be exciting. It's gonna be a good time. Make sure y'all tread carefully down there and learn a new way of getting into the stadium and all that. I gotta say that upfront because it is gonna be a little bit of a maze. Not only just for the media, but for everyone else to get to their seats. So hopefully that goes well, hopefully the weather holds up too. It looked like we talked about some rain to see these are the things that I warn everybody against when we try to predict these games because weather definitely changes everything. It changes everything. It is all about though, Liam Cohen and Trevor Lawrence, man, that's really gonna lead this team.

4:06This is a very player driven coach centric organizational team is what the Jaguars are right now and they're playing on the opponent that ain't necessarily none of that, right? They're not necessarily a player driven team. The ownership group and the management seem like they're driving them into the ground. And we don't know what the coaching to expect. That little part scares me because I have the utmost respect for Todd Monkin. And I know a lot of people may look at his offense in Baltimore and say, I left a lot to be desired. Maybe they had something to do the head coach too. Sometimes that's the way teams want to play. You got to play a certain way that kind of fits your thing. Like the Jaguars, we have this identity now, right? We have this identity and we expect to come out with a Chris passing game and a nice balance running running running game. We don't know who they're going to throw the ball to. One thing about this staff with Jacksonville and I told everyone this last year, when I

5:09used to watch when the Jags weren't very good, you could always call the plays out. I used to actually make people laugh in the press box doing that. I'd be like, here it comes. They're going over here, they're going over there, it's on there. How you do that? Well, I'm going to just be real honest. I ain't that smart. I'm not a hank. I'm not a mission. I have no special powers when it came to that because it's probably 12,000 people in that stadium that did the same thing. They used to be unpredictable. That's what the problem was. They were unpredictable. I mean, they were predictable, not unpredictable. They were predictable. They were. I couldn't do that last year. I could not. I tried. I tried. That's one of the little games I played. Something I do with myself. I said, I tried to guess calls. I tried to guess play calls. I do that every time I watch games. I had to learn how to do it in silence, though, because it drives some people crazy. But I sat there. Could figure it out.

6:10And that means that they're not predictable. And it's okay to be unpredictable when you're successful. It's bad to be unpredictable when you're not successful. It's like Mike Norville, but we'll talk about that at some other point. Yeah. I expect the Jaguars to win the game. It'd be nicer if they could come out and go 55 to 10. And they very well, Mike, if they do. I will. If they go 55 to 10, I'm going to go back and I'm going to pull his clip. But I'm saying, be nice if they go 55 to 10. Sometimes I throw stuff out there. But I don't expect that. I expect an extremely workman-like business-like game for the Jacksonville Jaguars. And we'll talk more about why in segment two because this is the NFL. Nobody expected the Rams to get their soccer blown off last night. I know I didn't. Did you all expect the Rams to score seven points? And I know everybody wants to put it on their travel schedule or whatever.

7:11You got to get another team from defense. That other team and that other defense, so credit, the 49ers. And I know Cleveland coming in here. That's not the 49ers upset in the Rams or beating the Rams. That ain't Cleveland coming to Jackson. And Cleveland beats the Rams. It'll be a monumental upset, right? Especially if they beat them 27 and 7. It'll be a monumental, monumental upset. Then we'd all realize just how bad of a coach seven, Kevin Stofansky, really was, in Cleveland. But that kind of stuff would really, really make us worry a little bit. And that's why in segment three, we're going to talk about, it's not just about the score, it's about the how that matters too. I am confident that they're going to win. I'm confident that they're better than Cleveland. And this version of the Jacksonville Jaguars just will not lose to a team that they are actually just better than most of the time in the NFL. You don't lose the teams that you are absolutely better than. Sometimes it happens. Sometimes the game is a little bit too close for comfort because everybody's an NFL player.

8:14They're all pros, man. They ain't no bad players in the league, relatively speaking there, right? But not the way that we always talk about who's bad and who's not. In college it's a little bit different. You've got one team that may have half their roster is going to play in the NFL and another team that might have three or four guys that may get a sniff in the NFL. And then you see the result on the field. It's like me fighting Mike Tyson. That's what it looks like. You never get that in the NFL. I'm not telling you don't get blow outs. You do get blow outs. But it's very, very rare that like for instance, Cleveland is like the worst team or one of the worst teams in the league. Then Miami some people still might say Tennessee or the Raiders. I think both of them are improved. But yeah, they're bad. Maybe the Jets too. But nobody's ever more than a two touchdown underdog in the NFL. That's for a reason because it is still the NFL and anything can happen if you saw last night and we'll go through that in the segment too where anything might happen if you're not careful if you jacks, if you're the Jacksonville Jaguars and unfortunately I got to tell

9:16you what some of those things might be. And I'll do it just a second here on Locked On Jaguars. Today shows sponsor and brought to you by Odo running a business shouldn't feel like you're trying to connect to bunch of systems that were never designed to be connected or work together, right? One app for accounting, another for inventory, another for sales and somehow none of them ever talk to each other. That's where Odo comes in. Odo is an all in one business management software that brings every part of your business together in one powerful platform from sales and accounting to inventory and marketing and everything works in one place. Odo is one platform to manage, grow and scale your business. Now, you know, imagine all of these different things to being people. How do you expect people with a common goal to do that common goal if they never speak to each other? Now, take that and put that in certain departments and functions of your company.

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11:18Now, Fando always has the information of the parts that you can make smart, reasonable decisions based on the information that they give you. And I'm telling you right now, man, I happen to believe that tight ends will play a major part this year. Watch it and mark it down. People are really, really, really prioritizing tight end play. Keep that in mind when you start making your selections on Fando. Make this your most rewarding season ever with Fando. Visit fando.com to get started. Moving and grooving here on Locked On Jaguar. As I'm Tony Wiggins, the host of Locked On Jaguars, we appreciate you making us your first listen because it is your team every day. It's your season every day here. Sunday is going to be the start of your season, man. We've been waiting a while. It feels like forever, doesn't it? You get through the draft and then you go through the summer and you take your vacations,

12:18you come back, training camp starts and then we're like, okay, we got it going. We got it going. Then we're like, we can't wait for preseason. And then five minutes into the preseason game, you're like, okay, there's things. I can't wait to get these games over with and we get to the regular season. And we're there. No more window shopping, no more hoping, no more guessing, no more when it's just going to start. It's going to start Sunday. That's when it's going to start. And once it gets started, you guys want the Jaguars to get off to a rousing start and a good start. And I think that's probably going to happen in the wind column. Remember, we don't apologize. We don't apologize for winds around here. Those are the words of Liam Coleman they want to tell the game last year. I think it was either Arizona or Vegas when he said that on the road. But I agree with him because whether you win by five, 10, one walk off your goal, does not matter. You won the game. And I thought it's going to say one and it's going to say one and no in the wind column. Here's some things to watch out for though.

13:20Inclimate weather or anything that could jump this game up. The things you can't control. Inclimate weather, poor fish eating. The opener last year the Jaguars lost a game to the Cincinnati Bengals. They won that game because of a bad call by the way. And some mishaps on their own. But at the end of the day, we just remember that Travis Hunter had a walk off pass break up. They should have ended the game and they called them bogus play. They very, very bogus, very bogus pass interference. You get that win. The Jaguars, if everything else goes the way it absolutely ended up going. The Jaguars win 14 games and they probably home feel, advantage and get a buy and all of that stuff. So every little thing matters, man. New England, if they did not lose an early season game last year to the Bengals, I believe it was at home, they too would it was they lost to somebody they weren't supposed to lose to early in the year. It might have been the Raiders. The packs did. And at some point, it ended up costing them later on in the season instead of being, you know, having the best record they were tied.

14:22I think with Denver and Denver, got them at home. Didn't help because the patch still went to the Super Bowl, but you get the point. The point is is you always want home feel advantage, right? It's still the NFL man. People can get you. Miles Garrett may be gone. He didn't do much last night lined up across from the first bout in the Hall of Fame and Trent Williams and those quick drops. Miles is gone, but they bring in Jared versus Jared versus ain't chop liver or livin onion or sweet peas or whatever it is you don't like. Don't be sitting here acting like this because Miles Garrett gone is gone from Cleveland all of a sudden Jared versus his light work. That is not true. Jared versus is more decorated as an edge rusher than anybody on that offensive line that the Jaguars have. As much as I love Anton Harrison and I think Colby and Lennon, if he does play who he's a game time decision. Oh, Jared versus has been the pro bowls all rookie rookie, you're all kinds of stuff.

15:25Been in the playoffs. Don't you sit here and act like that's going to be easy work. Two sacks is two sacks. I don't care who gets them whether it's Miles Garrett or Jared versus you cannot let him dominate this game. Carson Swaycing was the rookie of the year last year on defense at linebacker outstanding player turned out to be everything that we thought Chad Moomo was going to end up being right. I think the side line to side line player can really, really diagnose everything's a real good player. And he's going to try to, you know, sunny up that running game. He's going to try to stand there and get freed up behind Mason Graham who a lot of people wanted. I think I ended up unfollowing somebody blocking somebody because five times a week they were telling me leading up to the draft Mason Graham Mason Graham. I said, dude, I heard you Mason Graham. And then when I did a mock draft or I said something bad about Mason Graham to do went off on me. So I had to let him go, but he had a love affair for Mason Graham. So he probably is one of the people and others that are sitting there watching. They're rooting for the Jaguars, but they're hoping that Mason Graham plays well because

16:27they want to say see I told you. And he was a pretty decent player last year for them. So we'll see that close up. The key for me is trying to figure out what top monkey does on offense and not doing the things that could jump up the game, things you can't control. Like that's not officials and that's not weather. That's a turnover. Getting off the field on third down. Personal fouls. Changes of field position. Pourses play on special teams. Little stuff. Not like people just off just playing just got off or busted coverages and guys dropping touchdowns. I'm talking about the little things, the margins, right? Those little small things, we've talked so much about Liam Cohen saying he wants to make sure that he always has an edge, right? The edge and they're going to attack these edges. But another thing that we should talk about are the margins. How can we have these close games? The NFL is just like that.

17:28And there's a formula sometimes that will get you beat if you don't have to your business. You can be as excited as you want to be if you're a player. But this is the time to also be measured and to really be good. Not just think you're good, but to really be good. And when you're really good, you know what? Here's an example I've always given. You know, seeing and tracking field and guys are running and they, let's say you're running 200 and they come around and when they turn, you know the guy that's always running real calm, he always wins. And the dude that looks like he's running hard and he's doing, he's wasting all of that edge because it got all of that want to. But the other guy is so sure about his form. He knows exactly these breathing, he's doing everything, no wasted motion. When you get out there on the field, the Raurai is fine, but it won't save you if you're not under control. If you're not the excitement is cool. That's what Trevor used to do is to overthrow the ball early in games. We want that to not happen. If you're under control, you have to not only be talented, but you have to be good.

18:32That comes from repetition, that comes from confidence and that comes from being sure about who you are. So the Jaguars are just flat out better, but this is still the NFL and you can still take a lump across your head if you are not prepared. I don't think that's going to happen. I'm not rooting for it to happen. And I know it's not going to happen. If they win, well, I don't absolutely know, that's me taking an educated guess. But if they win or lose, we're going to be here after the game to talk to you about it here on Lockdown Jaguars on a post game show. So here's what I want you to think about. The score and how they score or how they play were matter to the fans just as much and I know this already. Just as much as a win or a loss in some ways. If they lose the whole everything's going to fall apart, at least for another week until they have a chance to win, but they got a tough game and week two against Denver. So you don't want to get off to a bad start, right?

19:34You want to win the game, but you can absolutely win the game and still have some issues and things that you need to make sure that you got to shore up. That's the point that I want to get to the score and how and why it matters to the fans and it should matter to the fans to a certain extent. We'll get that just a second here on Lockdown Jaguar. Matt Terry here from the Lockdown Lions podcast. Life insurance is one of those things. You don't really think about until you have a reason to for me, it really hit home when my father passed away over 20 years ago. You start thinking less about yourself and more about the people who depend on you, making sure they're taking care of no matter what. That's why I like ethos. They make getting life insurance simple. It's 100% online, no doctor visits, no needles, none of that. You can get a quote in seconds, applying just a few minutes and even get same day coverage. And honestly, that's huge because life gets busy. You can get up to $3 million in coverage and some plans are as low as just $30 a month.

20:35It's just one of those things that gives you peace of mind knowing your family is protected. Take 10 minutes to get covered today with life insurance through ethos. Get your free quote ethos.com slash lock down NFL. That is ETHOS.com slash lock down NFL. Applications may vary. Rates may vary. And today's show is sponsored and brought to you by Game Time. It's week one. And it's a full slate of games going on in the NFL. And sometimes the best memories actually come from games you almost missed. Right? Game time makes it easy to find tickets to NFL matchups you want to see with prices that include fees. So you know your cost upfront. You can browse games and see a panoramic view from your seat before you buy and get tickets in just a couple of taps. Plus zone deals let's you choose the section and let's game time choose the seats to help save even more. Now listen, people been calling me already about tickets next week and Denver.

21:37Man, you know anybody, you know anybody. Yeah, I know somebody their name is game time. Go download that app and go to game time and see if you can find you some tickets on the road to Denver. Good luck now because that's a tough ticket to get, right? Here's what you need to do, man. Get your friends together. Get your tickets and tell them it's game time download the game time app, create an account and use the code locked on for $20 off your first purchase terms apply again, create an account and use the code locked on for $20 off at game time. Go download that man. Get them tickets right now. Third and final segment here on locked on Jaguars is we are headed to the opener at home against the Cleveland Browns on Sunday at 1 o'clock and I'm telling you everybody is super, super excited, super, super excited. So I'm going in with just open eyes and people will be happy if you win 31 30. It's going to be a small segment though and I get it. Go back to where Liam said we don't apologize for when so at the end of the day regardless

22:41of what the score is, they're either going to be 1 and 0 or 1. Nine times out of 10 they're going to be 1 and 0 and we're going to hold on to that, right? That's such being optimistic here. But the other part of this comes when you think about it in terms of what the optics will be like what do people see and what you see usually determines like what or how you may feel about something. If they win 31 30, oh we're going to hear today and do enough on defense and they shouldn't re-sign David Lord. I'm telling you right now that's what you're going here, right? If they win 31 10, it's just to clean them browns. Man, they did what they had to do. They did what they had to do but they ain't going to be this easy. You know, we're going to hear that too, right? If they lose, I will go in my closet and find that grief management jacket in the stethoscope that I have for years around here and dust it off because I haven't had to use it for

23:43a whole calendar year. And I will put it on and I'll be a grief counselor come Sunday. The thing is though, I don't know what I will be willing to tell you at that point. I can give you some advice right now. So let Dr. Wade tell you right now, my advice. If they win 31 10, don't take any whole bunch of stuff about it because you got to win, you got to win. Okay, do we want to know we want to gain we're supposed to, you put it behind you, go on the next week. If they lose 31 to 10, don't let it tell you the whole season. Because it might not be nobody thought the Rams was course seven points only last night. That's exactly what they did and Aaron Dollar and have nothing to do with that. That's the same team they're going to have for the rest of the year. All of the players was out there and we ain't going to blame you on no schedule either, no flight schedule. They just got it handed to him because it is the national football team. And they were also playing a very good team who's also arrived when it gives them problems all the time because they know each other so well. The Cleveland Browns don't know the Jacksonville Jaguars. It's still the NFL. We don't know them under this new coach.

24:43And that is the thing that gives me a little bit of trepidation that this game could be a lot closer than we think. And I said that on the squad show, I said it on our crossover show yesterday that I did with Spencer German from Lockdown Browns. I said, look, man, I expect to work in like game. I said 26 to 13. I don't know if they're going to score two touchdowns and get four field goals or if they'll get two field goals, score three touchdowns. And maybe when they're going for one of the PATs or something, somebody jumps outside and places the ball at the one and then the Jags say, let's go ahead and get two and then they don't get two. They miss it. So that's how you end up with 26. But 26 is like the ultimate score of a workman like game. You end up with 26, they end up with 13 or 14 or 10. You win the game. You take your jersey off the other than the laundry and you go home and you regroup and you come back for another week against Denver. There's going to be a tough week. There's going to be a whole different challenge in and of itself. Just warn everybody, they're right smack in the middle of the Jaguars making the run that they made last year.

25:43They struggle with Arizona who fired their coach. They struggle with the Raiders who fired their coach and got rid of their quarterback and had the number one pick. They probably should have lost to the Raiders and Devon Hamilton doesn't knock that ball down. And I think that's the game that Liam said, we don't apologize for wins. But afterwards, if you don't win, you have some concerns, right? You hope the things that you saw don't bite you against Arizona. You saw some things that ended up showing up in the playoffs against Buffalo. So for the fans, I can get it because what you don't want to see certain things, you're already hoping you're optimistic that this is going to go and look a certain way. There are things that people are worried about running back offensive line, linebacker. Folks have been concerned about that stuff all throughout the off season. You know how? Because I sit here and I interact with fans each and every day that those are the things

26:46that they're asking questions about. So if you come out of this game in one, two or all three of those areas are problematic for Jacksonville, even in a win, they are going to sound the alarm to fans and fans are going to obviously respond and react to it. So I'm going to brace you right now for it. And even if those things don't hinder them this this week and they don't show up, right? It doesn't mean that they're not there because they can play a better opponent that exposes them. And I'm telling you all of that to say this, it's not that I'm, you know, trying to hedge my bets here. What I'm telling you is I realize that the expectations of the people that follow Jacksonville Jaguars football, the fans of Duol County in Jacksonville, Florida, as well as a lot of other people around that have at least been fair in the media. Everyone's expectations of the Jaguars has gone up at least amongst the group of people that I just mentioned. There are other people that think the Jaguars aren't going to make a playoff. And it was a flash in the pan.

27:47Yeah, whatever. Okay. You're entitled to your opinion. But right now, the biggest issue for me is are those things real, even in a win, are those things some things that are going to come back and bite you and when that happens, you start having anxiety and you start worrying that, okay, we're not going to make the run that we want to. So it's not just about optics and what you see. It's about trying to frame a narrative that gives you the confidence that you need moving forward, which is why I'm trying to tell you either way, don't let one game knock you off your square to the point where you believe that this is going to tell the whole story for the season. No, I think they're going to have 17 regular season chapters and no two games are going to really, really look alike unless the Jaguars go out and then pose their will on their opponent. And then you can make everything look like one thing you got to do though is make sure they don't turn the ball over. And I would like to see them get some more explosives in the passing game. I think Liam Cohen talked about this that this week because that will enhance, I believe

28:51their chance. Shout out to Travis Hunter, two man. When you miss time, the way he did and kid, you know, he's playing offensive defense because he never wants to come off the field. So he had, he had to come off the field last year after game six because he didn't play anymore the rest of the season and then to sit there and watch his teammates make that run and probably think that he could have been the difference. I'm shouting them out because he has a chance to get back on that field and really, really help a whole bunch of people. And he's doing it against the team that had a chance to take him and they didn't do it. So I look for Travis Hunter to have a huge, huge impact on this game one way already on it and I know pun intended. You say one way or another. That means offense or defense when you're talking about Travis. All right, man. So here's what we're going to do on video. I'm going to send you to our 24 seven locked on NFL YouTube channel for the 2026 NFL season preview all three episodes airing now until Sunday at 1 p.m. when the action actually starts. What team will be the final one standing if you're on audio, find it on the locked on

29:55NFL feed wherever you get your podcast. Man, we are finally here. I know y'all glad I'm glad to will see Sunday after the game for post game show. Go Jags. Thank you for making us your first listen. We'll see you later. Hey, NFL fans. I'm Brian Peacock and that is Matt Williamson hosts of the NFL six pack part of the locked on podcast network. Your team every day NFL six pack brings you the latest NFL news and analysis and breaks down all of the weekly action. A six pack of takes daily on the playoffs pushed in the 2025 season or if your teams in draft mode, yeah, we'll hit that too. All right here every day on the locked on podcast network. NFL six pack subscribe on YouTube or everywhere you get your podcasts.