Will the run defense get gashed again in 2020?

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This week, we’re sitting down with Andrew Potter from Football Outsiders to talk about the Jacksonville Jaguars and how they think they’ll do this season. How can they improve their win-loss record? Will their run defense get gashed up and down the field? What is Jay Gruden’s impact on Gardner Minshew and the offense in general.

Let’s keep it going...

With all the attrition along the Jaguars defensive line, do you think this team will get regularly gashed in the run game like they did last season?

Despite an unexpected top-10 finish there in 2018, run defense was the weakness of both the 2017 and 2019 Jaguars teams.

Without Calais Campbell, who led the team in run defeats, and possibly/probably Yannick Ngakoue, who led the team in run stop rate, it’s tough to see where improvement would come from.

The addition of Joe Schobert at linebacker should help, because the linebackers were a major liability for the Jaguars run defense (as well as for their terrible defense against screens) in 2019. However, now that Al Woods has opted out the core of the defensive line is the same two players it was before. Tackling should be an offseason focus, which could help — the Jaguars had 158 broken tackles, most in the league, and a broken tackle on 14.2% of all plays.

I’d expect the team to improve a little through regression toward the mean, especially in broken tackles, but unless Schobert has a major impact here, I certainly wouldn’t expect run defense to be a strength.

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