Week 16's slate of NFL football will continue in Denver on Sunday afternoon as the Jaguars head to Empower Field at Mile High to take on the Broncos.
Jacksonville enters this one winners of five in a row behind some recent dominant performances from its offense. They’ve scored 36 and 48 points in back-to-back weeks and, despite having sat at just 5–4 in mid-November, have paved themselves a path to the AFC’s No. 1 seed with three games to go in the season.
Said path, of course, involves taking down the Broncos on Sunday. Denver is riding a league-best 11-game win streak heading into this one, fresh off an impressive 34–26 victory over the Packers last weekend. Second-year quarterback Bo Nix has been among the steadier players at the position this season, and thanks to a dominant defensive front, the Broncos are on track for a bye in the playoffs for the first time since 2015.
With plenty of AFC postseason implications on the line, here are three bold predictions for Broncos vs. Jaguars.
Trevor Lawrence will go from a six-touchdown performance down to zero
Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence was virtually unstoppable last Sunday against the Jets, accounting for six total touchdowns—five passing, one rushing—in what was a 48–20 win.
Facing off against the Broncos, however, is set to be a completely different beast.
Heading into Sunday, Denver’s defense has sacked opposing quarterbacks an NFL-best 58 times while allowing just 14 touchdown passes—tied for the third-fewest in the league—and 196.9 passing yards per game, also a bottom-10 number.
While Lawrence’s play has been solid of late, it’s also been spotty at various points this season. Look for the Jacksonville signal-caller to endure a bit of a wake up call in this one and account for zero touchdowns just one week removed from notching a half-dozen.
RJ Harvey will be held to fewer than 50 yards rushing
On the offensive side of the ball for Denver, rookie RJ Harvey has taken control of the backfield since J.K. Dobbins’s season-ending injury, logging double-digit carries in each of the last four games as the de facto starter.
The second-round pick has also scored four touchdowns over the past three weeks, but while his volume has increased, his efficiency hasn’t—averaging just 3.4 yards per carry over the aforementioned four-game span.
On Sunday afternoon Harvey faces his toughest test of the season as the Jaguars roll into Denver with the league’s top run defense, allowing a league-low 86.3 rushing yards per game. Given that, I'm predicting the 24-year-old to be largely bottled up, and held under 50 rushing yards.
Broncos will win their 12th in a row, inching closer to the AFC’s No. 1 seed in the 2025 postseason
This one is set up as one of the weekend’s best, with both Denver and Jacksonville red hot and battling for playoff positioning as the season winds down.
In what will turn into a low-scoring, pitchers’-duel style contest, I’m predicting the home team Broncos to come out on top, 20–14, and inch closer to AFC supremacy leading into the postseason.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Broncos vs. Jaguars: Three Bold Predictions As AFC Playoff Implications Loom.