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The Jacksonville Jaguars’ turnover luck on defense finally flipped last season. After generating the NFL’s third-fewest turnovers from 2020-24 (89), including the fewest in the league in 2024 (9), the Jags ranked second with 31 forced turnovers in 2025. The secondary adopted the moniker “Strapsonville” about halfway through the season. It was quite the debut for defensive coordinator Anthony Campanile and his staff.
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“We’re being coached to take the ball away,” cornerback Jourdan Lewis said after Monday’s training camp practice. “High pointing the ball, making sure that the receiver can’t make a catch, make a play on the ball in the air. We’re being coached to do that. Everything that you see, all the turnovers, everything that we’re doing, being ball hungry, that’s getting coached.”
“And we have the talent to go out there and do it every single week, as you saw last year. When we came out here at OTAs last year, I knew, like, ‘Wow, we got some guys that can go take the ball away.’ Just like this year. OTAs and training camp, we just have to fine-tune some of our detailed things, but we have the talent to take the ball away.”
While I don’t disagree with anything Lewis said, it’s hard to imagine Jacksonville forcing 30+ turnovers for a second straight season. Linebacker Devin Lloyd accounted for nearly a fifth of the 2025 production with 5 interceptions and 1 fumble recovery; he’s now a Carolina Panther. The defense will gain playmaking ability via Travis Hunter, sure, but a 15.6% clip of turnovers per drive will still be difficult to carry over. Such rates tend to fluctuate from year to year.
Here’s some added context on the Jaguars from clevanalytics.
The defense finished 5th in the NFL by EPA but when you eliminate turnovers, they ranked 11th, the 2nd largest drop in the NFL behind the Bears defense. They also faced the single easiest schedule of opposing QBs by EPA, with 54% of snaps coming from either a backup QB or a QB ranked 30th or worse by EPA. When adjusting for opposing QB and using success rate instead of EPA, which can be heavily skewed by turnovers, the Jags pass defense was right around league average. Those turnovers also really helped benefit the Jags as no offense in the NFL saw more short fields than Jacksonville (28) and no team saw a higher percentage of their season points come from short fields (25.3%). If only evaluating offenses by drives that started in their own territory, the Jags offense ranks just league average on a points per drive basis.
Again — I don’t disagree with Lewis’ points about having good coaching and talent. That should keep Jacksonville from pulling a sharp U-turn back into the pits of turnover rankings. But will they get enough bounces of the ball to have another massive season in the turnover department?
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How many turnovers do you think the defense will force in 2026?
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