Nobody wanted to win Jaguars-Chargers game

The Jacksonville Jaguars defeated the Los Angeles Chargers 20-17 in overtime on Sunday. While the result looks fairly normal, the road to it was anything but.

It started just after the two-minute warning. On the first play after the warning, Tre Boston intercepted Blake Bortles. All that Los Angeles needed to do was pick up one first down to put the game away.

But on the first play of the ensuing possession, Chargers running back Austin Ekeler fumbled. Jaguars’ safety Tashaun Gipson recovered and appeared to score a touchdown. But he was ruled down by contact.

Still, with the in Los Angeles territory, things looked good for Jacksonville to at least tie the game. Bortles had other ideas.

On the first play after the two minute warning, Blake Bortles threw an interception to Tre Boston. But Boston apparently didn’t know (or care) that the Jags had all three time outs remaining. So, rather than return the interception, he decided to showboat a little and run out of bounds.

We’re not sure how far he would have returned the ball. But he at least could have flipped the field position battle.

Los Angeles was unable to run the clock out Jacksonville got the ball back at midfield. Its drive to tie or win was aided by a 15-yard roughing the passer penalty on Joey Bosa.

Eventually, Josh Lambo made the tying field goal and the game went to overtime. But the craziness was not over there.

After forcing a Jaguars punt, the Chargers decided to get vertical on a third-and-9 from deep in their own territory. A.J. Bouye came through with an interception.

But even the interception came with two negatives.

First of all, Bouye came pretty close to scoring as it was. If he hadn’t held the ball out after the interception, maybe he would have scored. But that’s all speculative. Not speculative is that Aaron Colvin was flagged for a taunting penalty, pushing Jacksonville — who was without its regular long snapper — back 15 yards.

Still, the Jaguars went cautious and decided to run it three times to set Lambo up for a short field goal. The field goal got five-yards shorter when the Chargers were called for the rarely seen defensive delay of game penalty.

The five-yard penalty became significant when the field goal was deflected, but still went through. Would it have been good from five yards longer? It’s tough to say.

Fortunately for Jacksonville, we don’t have to find out. One of the strangest games in a strange NFL season came to an end with that kick.

So, if your team blows a game at some point this season, take some solace from this. Both of these teams blew no fewer than two quality chances to win in less than two minutes of game time, and then doubled down in overtime.