Tough Loss to Steelers Deflates Fading Jaguars

The conventional wisdom around the league when the season began was that the Jacksonville Jaguars were a team on the rise but perhaps still a year away from being a legitimate contender in the rugged AFC.

The Jaguars seemed to accelerate that timetable when they won their first three games, with their defense shutting down opponents and second-year quarterback Byron Leftwich making one clutch play after another. The Jaguars were tied for first place in the AFC South as recently as three weeks ago.

Now, though, conventional wisdom seems to be winning out. Jacksonville has lost three straight games and six of its past nine to drop to 6-6, putting the Jaguars three games behind the Indianapolis Colts in the division race and a game behind the Denver Broncos and Baltimore Ravens in the chase for the conference's final wild-card spot. The Jaguars have been caught by two AFC teams headed in the opposite direction, the resurgent Cincinnati Bengals and Buffalo Bills.

The Jaguars nearly got the sort of emotional, season-mending victory they needed Sunday night at home against the Pittsburgh Steelers. But they couldn't cash in on their scoring opportunities. The defense let up at the wrong time, letting Pittsburgh move down the field in the final 1 minute, 50 seconds for a go-ahead field goal with 18 seconds to play, and the Steelers escaped with a 17-16 triumph when Jaguars rookie kicker Josh Scobee just missed a 60-yard field goal attempt as time expired.

A win in that intense, draining Sunday night game might have served as a springboard to bigger things for the Jaguars. Instead, the loss was sufficiently deflating that Coach Jack Del Rio felt compelled to issue a public reminder during his news conference Monday that the Jaguars remain in playoff contention and haven't been reduced to playing for their dignity.

"I think teams that are out of it are playing for pride,'' Del Rio said. "We're not out of it. It's not as good as it could be. We're not in charge. We need some teams to get beat that are in front of us right now. They're one game away from us, and we've got a lot of football to play. We're aware of the big picture. But for us, the focus has to be on the next opponent -- Chicago. They beat a very good Vikings team last Sunday, so it'll be a good challenge.''

There were plenty of could-have-beens for the Jaguars to ponder in the aftermath of the Pittsburgh game. The defense, after shutting out the Steelers in the second half to that point, jumped offside and then allowed Pittsburgh to move 51 yards on four plays on the final drive. Del Rio permitted some precious time to tick off the clock by not calling time out with the clock running during the Steelers' last drive, then using a timeout to attempt to ice Pittsburgh kicker Jeff Reed before his 37-yard field goal. In the first half, Scobee missed a 32-yard field goal try.

But mostly, the Jaguars were left to lament their inability to convert their scoring opportunities into touchdowns. They got only one touchdown Sunday night in five trips inside the Pittsburgh 20-yard line. On the season, they rank last in the NFL in red-zone offensive efficiency, with 14 touchdowns in 35 possessions inside their opponents' 20-yard line (40 percent). That has brought scrutiny on the play-calling of offensive coordinator Bill Musgrave.

Del Rio defended the play-calling but conceded that the missed scoring chances have been a major problem. "We're down there a bunch, and that's a good thing,'' Del Rio said. "But not being able to get points is becoming too much to overcome.''

The schedule actually is favorable for a late-season playoff push by the Jaguars, if they can avoid a carryover from the Pittsburgh loss. They face only one team with a winning record -- Green Bay -- in their final four games. They play the Bears and Houston Texans at home, and face the Packers and Oakland Raiders on the road.

"I've seen the character of this football team,'' Del Rio said. "This team has shown the ability to fight through adversity, the ability to overcome some losses at different positions, shown the ability to come back after a tough loss, shown the ability to come back after a big win. I think our football team is going to scrap. We're going to come out and compete each and every week.''

The Jaguars are trying to avoid a fifth straight losing season. Since going 14-2 and reaching their second AFC title game under former coach Tom Coughlin in the 1999 season, they've had three losing seasons under Coughlin and went 5-11 last year under Del Rio.

"You come into a situation where you're losing, and you start losing a little closer,'' Del Rio said. "Then you start winning some closer [games]. At some point, as you build your program, you start winning big. We haven't gotten into the winning big phase yet. . . . [but] I do believe we're capable of getting there.''

Holmes Done?

Kansas City Chiefs tailback Priest Holmes, who has missed the last four games because of a knee injury, was to meet late Tuesday with Coach Dick Vermeil and club president Carl Peterson to discuss the possibility of shutting down Holmes for the remainder of the season. The Chiefs thought he'd be ready to play by now, but Holmes isn't close to returning. He was having another superb season before he got hurt, running for 892 yards and 14 touchdowns in eight games.

Earlier Tuesday, Vermeil said during a news conference: "The original [prognosis] was two to four weeks. We're at four weeks and I don't think he's anywhere close to being ready to play. Is he going to be ready to play in two weeks? I don't know. I don't want Priest Holmes to feel pressure because the most important thing is that he heals properly so he can come back and be 100 percent next year. If it means sitting out all of [the Chiefs' remaining games this season] and that's the best thing to do, then that's exactly what we'll do. But obviously he isn't ready to play after four weeks."

The Chiefs planned to leave it up to Holmes as to whether he'd keep trying to play this season.

"He's a unique guy and he cares deeply,'' Vermeil said. "He feels bad. For a while there, he was almost in a state of semi-depression of not being able to play and it made him realize how much he really missed playing and how much he appreciated the opportunity to play. He's a little deeper than most. . . . I haven't talked to him this week. I talked to him last week and I thought he was in a pretty good frame of mind.''

The Chiefs are deep at tailback and have had 100-yard rushing performances by two different runners in the four games that Holmes has missed. Derrick Blaylock had a 186-yard outing in a loss at New Orleans on Nov. 14, and Larry Johnson ran for 118 yards on 20 carries in last Sunday's 34-27 victory at Oakland. Before that, Johnson had managed only 168 rushing yards on 41 carries in his 11 games since the Chiefs selected him in the first round of the 2003 draft, and he had clashed with Vermeil and had asked to be traded. The Chiefs have to hope that it was a breakthrough game, and they might consider trading him for defensive help in the offseason if Johnson raises his value league-wide by performing well down the stretch.

The Chiefs perhaps have been the league's most disappointing team with a 4-8 record after beginning the year with Super Bowl aspirations.

"We are what we are right now,'' he said. "We have created our own situations and our own win-loss records. We make no excuses for it. We'd like to finish real strong like anybody else would going into the fourth quarter of the season. We've always valued the fourth quarter of the season and have played pretty well over the fourth quarter of the season the last three years. We would like to believe we can do that again."

Erickson, Donahue Insist They're Not At Odds

San Francisco 49ers Coach Dennis Erickson and General Manager Terry Donahue maintained during separate news briefings this week that there is no rift between them. The 49ers have a league-worst record of 1-11, but Donahue said of speculation that he will fire Erickson after the season: "Absolutely not.''

Donahue said: "We get along fine. We're fighting our guts out trying to get a win. The reality is that this kind of a situation is difficult on everybody. It's not an ideal time to be a general manager or the head coach of the San Francisco 49ers because of the difficulty that we're in. We realized the situation was going to be hard because of the [salary] cap. We didn't know it would be this hard.''

About $29 million of the team's $80.5 million salary cap this season is "dead money,'' cap space devoted to players no longer on the roster. Donahue said he expects the 49ers to have $8 million or less of dead money on next season's salary cap, enabling the club to be more active on the free-agent market during the upcoming offseason.

There have been reports in recent weeks linking Erickson to the coaching job at the University of Washington. But he repeatedly has said that he plans to stay with the 49ers. He is two seasons into a five-year, $12.5 million contract.

"It's going to take all of us to get this thing going,'' Erickson said. "You get to a point where you are 1-11, and there are going to be a lot of rumors out there.''

Weekend Scoring Record

Teams scored 788 points scored in 16 games last weekend, matching the opening week of the 2002 season as the highest-scoring week in NFL history, according to the league. . . .

Houston placed safety Marcus Coleman on the injured reserve list because of a shoulder injury and promoted rookie safety Jammal Lord from the practice squad. Coleman became the second Texans defensive starter to be put on IR this week following linebacker Jay Foreman, who has a severe ankle sprain. . . .

The Bears placed rookie quarterback Craig Krenzel on the IR list because of the ankle injury he suffered in the Thanksgiving loss at Dallas. The fifth-round draft choice out of Ohio State made five starts this season, winning the initial three but losing the last two. He completed only 59 of 127 passes for 718 yards in his six appearances, with three touchdowns and six interceptions. He was sacked 23 times and was charged with eight fumbles. . . .

Notre Dame has been granted permission to interview Bills offensive coordinator Tom Clements for its head coaching vacancy. Clements is a former Notre Dame quarterback. New England Patriots offensive coordinator Charlie Weis, a Notre Dame graduate, also has been mentioned as a possible candidate for the job. . . .

As Patriots tailback Corey Dillon readies to face his former team this weekend, Bengals Coach Marvin Lewis this week accepted some of the blame for not repairing the relationship between Dillon and the Cincinnati organization last season. The Bengals traded the disgruntled Dillon to the Patriots in the offseason for a second-round draft pick.

"I failed to win Corey over to being fully committed as a Cincinnati Bengal,'' Lewis said during a news briefing. "That's my fault. Other than that, I have no regrets.''

Rudi Johnson, who won the Bengals' starting tailback job from Dillon last season, has run for 1,105 yards and seven touchdowns this year as Dillon's replacement. And Cincinnati used the second-round selection that it got in the Dillon trade on University of Maryland safety Madieu Williams, who has become a starter and has three interceptions. . . . Bills tight end Mark Campbell will miss the rest of the season because of a knee injury. Buffalo placed Campbell on IR and signed tight end Rodney Trafford to take his spot on the roster. . . .

The Colts signed Martin Gramatica as a kickoff specialist. The former Pro Bowl kicker was released by the Buccaneers last week. He had a workout for the Colts on Tuesday and will handle the club's kickoff duties while Mike Vanderjagt continues to handle field goals and extra points.