Saints vs. Jaguars: Time, live stream, TV, odds, keys to game, prediction for ‘Thursday Night Football’

We’re already into Week 7 of the NFL season, and our “Thursday Night Football” matchup pits the New Orleans Saints against the Jacksonville Jaguars. 

The Jags come into this game having won three in a row, and it looks like quarterback Trevor Lawrence — listed as questionable with a knee injury — will give it a go in this one, though a pregame workout could change that. New Orleans followed up its blowout win over the Patriots in Week 5 with a loss to the Texans last week, and is looking to avoid dropping under .500 for the first time this season.

Can the Jaguars capture their fourth consecutive win, or will the Saints put a stop to their streak? We’ll find out soon enough. Before we break down the matchup, here’s a look at how you can watch the game.

How to watch 

Date: Thursday, Oct. 19 | Time: 8:15 p.m. ET
Location: Caesars SuperDome (New Orleans)
Stream: Amazon Prime Video
Follow: CBS Sports App   
Odds: Saints -1; O/U 40 (via SportsLine consensus odds)

When the Jaguars have the ball

Jacksonville’s offense has been somewhat disappointing relative to preseason expectations. After taking off over the second half of last year, the Jags check in 13th in yards per game, 10th in points per game, 13th in FTN’s DVOA (Defense-adjusted Value Over Average), and just 23rd in Tru Media’s version of EPA/play. 

Specifically, the pass offense is lagging a bit behind, with the Jaguars checking in 14th in passing DVOA and Trevor Lawrence ranking a disappointing 22nd among 33 qualifiers in EPA/play. Some of that is due to a high volume of drops (11, third most in the NFL), several of which should have been touchdowns. But some of it is also Lawrence and the receivers seemingly not being entirely on the same page, and a lot of it is the Jaguars’ surprising inability to create explosive plays in the pass game. Just 6.6% of Lawrence’s dropbacks have resulted in a completed pass of 20 yards or more, a rate that checks in 25th out of the aforementioned 33 qualified passers. 

The time away from football seems to have affected Calvin Ridley a bit. Despite running routes at almost exactly the same average depth as he did the last time he was healthy (10.22 yards this year, 10.20 in 2020, per Tru Media), Ridley has seen his explosive receptions per target rate drop from 25.9% to 20.0% and his first downs per target rate dip from 45.5% to 38.6%. With the exception of Weeks 1 and 5, when he went off for a combined 15 catches for 223 yards and a touchdown on 19 targets, Ridley has caught just 11 of 25 passes thrown his way, for 140 yards and a score.

Ridley gets a tough matchup on Thursday night, as he is likely to see a whole lot of Marshon Lattimore in coverage. Lattimore is an inconsistent player, but one who has always gotten up and played his best in matchups against the game’s best receivers. When they last met in 2020, Ridley caught 5 of 9 targets for 108 yards. But in the previous matchup, he caught 2 of 3 for 28 yards when running routes against Lattimore and in the one before that it was zero catches on one target. Obviously, both players are different now, but it’s worth noting that they do have a history against each other. 

Jacksonville’s passing attack may run more through Christian Kirk in this game than anyone else. The Saints are weakest at coverage in the slot, where Kirk spends the most time among Jaguars wideouts. They also have Lattimore, and very good coverage linebackers and safeties, which seems likely to funnel the volume away from Ridley and Evan Engram, and toward Kirk and possibly Travis Etienne out of the backfield. 

The Saints have done a pretty good job of bottling up opposing run games, limiting them to 3.9 yards per carry, stopping 21.5% of rushing attempts at or behind the line of scrimmage, and giving up an explosive gain on only 6% of attempts. Etienne, though, has done strong work on the ground despite not being put in advantageous situations. Among 35 backs with 50 or more carries this season, Etienne ranks 29th in yards before contact per carry, but he’s 14th in yards after contact and seventh in avoided tackle rate. In other words, he’s getting more than what’s been blocked for him. And that will be necessary for him to find success against a stout New Orleans front.  

If Lawrence ends up being unable to play, just throw all of this out and bet on the Jags to center the entire offense around Etienne. 

When the Saints have the ball

If the Jaguars offense has been disappointing relative to expectations, then I’m not sure what to call the Saints. They have dealt with injuries to multiple offensive linemen and Chris Olave has been playing through some sort of toe issue, and they were without Alvin Kamara for three games due to a suspension; but this is a team with an offense that just looks … lackluster. New Orleans is 20th in yards per game, 24th in points per game, 20th in DVOA and 24th in EPA/play. 

The run game has not been great overall, though a bunch of that can be explained by Kamara’s suspension and the injury to Jamaal Williams. But the passing game has been subpar, and most of that can be laid at the feet of Derek Carr, whom the team acquired to juice the attack but who has instead steered it in largely the same way Andy Dalton did a year ago, but with markedly less efficiency. 

Pro-Football-Reference.com has a series of passing stats comparing a player’s numbers in specific categories to the league average in those categories, and you can see in Carr’s numbers that he is faring far worse than both the average quarterback and than he previously had in his career with the Raiders. 

Carr career stats

Carr is completing passes at a higher rate than the average quarterback and avoiding interceptions, but it’s come at the cost of creating, well, almost anything. His yards per attempt lags far behind the league average, as does his touchdown rate. And for just the second time in his career, he is taking sacks more often than the average passer. 

His off-target throw rate of 13.5% is the worst mark for the years during which Tru Media has data (beginning in 2017). His explosives per dropback rate of 7.3% is the worst since his rookie year. The same is true of his first downs per attempt rate of 30.55. And this is despite averaging a tied-for-career-high 9.2 air yards per attempt, which should in theory lead to longer completions and higher rates of explosives and first downs. Instead, he looks like a quarterback who is simply on the downswing of his career and holding his offense back to some degree. 

Meanwhile, Jacksonville’s defense has been pretty good this year. The Jags are eighth in defensive DVOA, and 10th against the pass. Opponents are averaging just 7.1 yards per attempt, and they have thrown eight interceptions along with a league-high-tying six dropped interceptions, according to Tru Media. The Jaguars have limited teams to explosive gains on just 6.5% of dropbacks, seventh-best in the NFL, and they have done so despite getting pressure on opposing quarterbacks at a considerably below-average rate (29.4% of dropbacks compared with a 35.5% average). 

With New Orleans down Ryan Ramczyk and James Hurst for this game, it’s possible the Jags could actually manage to get some pressure on the opposing quarterback for once. If they do, Carr could be in trouble. When under duress, he is 31 of 59 for 453 yards, zero touchdowns, and one interception so far this season, and he has taken a sack on 22.4% of his pressured dropbacks. Jacksonville will be without cornerback Tyson Campbell for this game, though, so perhaps Chris Olave will have an easier time getting open, and allow Carr to get rid of the ball before pressure begins bearing down on him. Michael Thomas should also have a significant size advantage on Tre Herndon in the slot, so there could be opportunities to pepper him with quick slants for short-to-medium gains that move the sticks. Carr, though, still seems likely to check it down more often than not, focusing the attack on Kamara, and asking his pass-catchers to do the heavy lifting in terms of creating yards. 

Prediction

Operating under the assumption that Lawrence plays, the Jaguars are a better bet to find offensive success despite the fact that the New Orleans defense is tough to move the ball against. Jacksonville’s defense is no slouch, and the Saints could be weighed down by their offensive line injuries and Carr’s relative ineffectiveness compared with Lawrence. (And if Lawrence is out, flip the pick to 16-13 Saints.) Pick: Jaguars 20, Saints 16