JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Trevor Lawrence was bad. Then he was really good. Then he was clutch.
And now he and the rest of the Jacksonville Jaguars are playing another week.
Lawrence rebounded from an awful first half in which he tossed four interceptions to throw four touchdown passes in the game’s final 31 minutes to lead the Jaguars to a 31-30 come-from-behind victory over the Los Angeles Chargers at TIAA Bank Field on Saturday night.
“You couldn’t write a crazier script,” Lawrence told NBC after the game. “We said in the locker room, it’s kind of how our season’s gone. We’re never out of the fight.”
The Jaguars’ rally from a 27-0 deficit was the third-largest comeback in playoff history, trailing only the Buffalo Bills’ 32-point comeback against the Houston Oilers in 1992 and the 28-point comeback by the Indianapolis Colts against the Kansas City Chiefs in 2013.
It was also the Jaguars’ fifth comeback victory this season after trailing by nine or more points. They rallied for victories against the Las Vegas Raiders, Tennessee Titans, Dallas Cowboys and Baltimore Ravens. The largest was a 17-point comeback against the Raiders.
Until Saturday night.
“I am kind of speechless, honestly, just to see what belief can do — to see when a team believes in each other what you can accomplish,” Lawrence said. “Playoff game, down 27-0 and we come back and win. We are always counted out of these games, and we don’t care. We love it.”
Lawrence threw touchdown passes on four consecutive drives to cut the Chargers’ lead to 30-28 then led the Jaguars on a 10-play, 68-yard game-winning drive that culminated with Riley Patterson’s 36-yard field goal as time expired.
Lawrence finished 28-of-47 passing for 288 yards and became the second player in NFL playoff history with three or more passing touchdowns and four or more interceptions in a game. Ben Roethlisberger had four of each in a 2020 wild-card game against the Cleveland Browns.
There’s no way to describe the way Lawrence played in the first half other than terrible.
His first pass was picked off, making him the first quarterback to throw an interception on his first career postseason attempt since Aaron Rodgers in the 2009 wild-card round.
His eighth pass was picked off.
His 12th pass was picked off.
And there were still two minutes remaining in the first quarter.
Lawrence would throw one more interception in the first half — and that point had as many completions to Chargers players as he did to his own. That made him the first player to throw four interceptions in a half of a playoff game since Brett Favre in 2001 and the third quarterback in the Super Bowl era to throw four interceptions in the first half of a postseason contest.
The Chargers pressured Lawrence in the first half and took away a lot of the short, quick passes that had been so effective this season.