Every Thursday I’ll present an interesting (to me, anyway) stat, break it down, and try to provide some context heading into the game the following weekend.

Going deep

One of the criticisms of the Jacksonville Jaguars offense, and mainly Chad Henne, the past several seasons has been the reluctance to throw the ball down the field. That’s not something that can be said in 2014, because the Jaguars are taking shots.

They’re not completing a lot of them, but they are taking them.

In 2013, Jaguars quarterbacks combined to throw 48 passes that traveled at least 20 yards in the air. Henne and Blaine Gabbert completed 14 for 388 yards and three touchdowns with five interceptions. They hit on only 29.2 percent of their throws.

This season, however, Henne and Blake Bortles have already thrown 31 passes that have traveled at least 20 yards in the air. That puts them on pace to throw 62 by season’s end, which would be the most since David Garrard completed 63 in 2009.

Unfortunately, the Jaguars aren’t hitting on many of those throws. They’ve completed just 7 of the 31 (22.6 percent) attempts for 308 yards and two touchdowns with three interceptions. The attempts rank 15th in the league but the completion percentage is 29th. Only the New York Giants (21.1 percent), Minnesota Vikings (20.0) and New York Jets (11.1) are worse.

Since getting on the field for the second half of the Week 3 loss to Indianapolis, Bortles is 4-for-21 (19.0 percent) for 174 yards and one touchdown with three interceptions on throws that traveled at least 20 yards in the air.

That doesn’t mix well with Sunday’s matchup against Cincinnati, because the Bengals are the NFL’s best team when it comes to limiting big passing plays. Opponents are completing an NFL-worst 17.1 percent of passing attempts that travel at least 20 yards in the air and have thrown one touchdown pass and three interceptions.

The Bengals have given up only six completions (tied with Detroit and Miami for the fewest) on 35 attempts.