It started as a dud, with the Jaguars moving the ball at will and the Saints underachieving, with the home fans booing their team. But it's a 60-minute game and New Orleans was better in the latter half, so things got good at the end. One of the better Thursday contests.

QUARTERBACKS:

We've seen games with the pros and cons of playing banged-up quarterbacks, with examples from this very game. The first week Derek Carr played through a shoulder injury, he averaged 3.4 yards per attempt. Trevor Lawrence, in contrast, not only threw for 204 yards and a touchdown against a good defense, but he defied the heavy knee brace he was wearing by running for 59 yards. Lawrence wasn't perfect, he was lucky to avoid an interception on a forced pass right before a field goal that proved to be important. But the injury clearly didn't bother him too much, and he has some extra rest now.

Carr threw for 301 yards, but he's kind of painful to watch. Took him 55 attempts to get there, and almost everything was short. Great for those starting Alvin Kamara and his dozen catches, but rough for those starting the wideouts. Kudos to Carr for bringing the team all the way back from 24-9 (after his own Pick Six). But (and we can either blame Carr or the coordinator) the offense has to work slowly down the field for everything, and it's tough to win games against good opposition that way. Lots of short passes to guys who don't have any separation (as seen on the interception, where there were three defenders around the receiver) and harmless completions the defense is giving them. The possibility/likelihood of Carr being replaced by Taysom Hill around the goal line is an additional issue. The announcers dwelt on the offense's continued struggles in the red zone, which I suppose has to be blamed on some combination of the quarterback and the play calling. Time and again it seems to take them 4 plays to get 10 yards. Difficult to watch.

Mention must be made of Carr being visibly frustrated with Chris Olave giving up on a fourth-quarter route. Clearly he and Olave weren't on the same page, and perhaps it was the receiver's fault, but the ball was 5 yards out of bounds, too. I don't know, something to file away. Davante Adams seems to love Carr but I'm not sure if he's got a similar relationship with his current receivers.

In fairness to Carr, he made a couple of really nice throws, including the touchdown pass that tied things at 24-24. He also threw what should have been the touchdown to either force overtime or give the Saints a chance to go for 2 in the final seconds, only to have Foster Moreau drop it in the corner of the end zone. Rough. But Moreau has never been known for his hands and that was the only good play out of four the Saints ran down there near the goal line, so maybe blame the coordinator for not drawing up something better.

RUNNING BACKS:

Remember the speculation that the Jaguars would be using a committee, with Travis Etienne losing work to Tank Bigsby and also passing down chances to JaMycal Hasty? No, Etienne got almost all carries (including a 2-yard touchdown, and an important fourth-and-short carry), while Bigsby played eight snaps. Etienne has scored 2 TDs three weeks in a row. I'm not sure he ever looks great, but workload and opportunities are awesome right now. That short-yardage carry, right before the Saints tied the game at 24, was a curious call out of the shotgun, so Etienne had to start about 4 yards short of where he needed to get to. Odd.

Alvin Kamara is certainly rewarding those who took the suspension discount, especially in PPR leagues. He's caught a ridiculous 35 passes in four games. Just 1 touchdown (and a nifty 2-point conversion catch last night), but Carr sure likes throwing to him. He'll lose some chances to Taysom Hill, but it doesn't look like he'd be running in a lot of short touchdowns in this offense anyway.

I'll give the Saints backup running back discussion more space than it merits. Jamaal Williams came off IR to carry 5 times for 14 yards. Kendre Miller played all of 3 snaps. Williams can be dropped. Miller can be kept on rosters in case of a Kamara injury, at which point surely the team will have figured out he has at least theoretical upside, Williams has none.

WIDE RECEIVERS:

Presumably the people thinking Calvin Ridley was ahead of Christian Kirk in this offense -- I realize it seemed that way after Week 1 -- have come around. Kirk made plays all over the field last night while Ridley caught 1 pass. It's hard to know whether he's not getting open or they're simply not calling plays for him. He played throughout but wasn't even targeted in the first half (Jamal Agnew saw 4 targets before halftime). I'm sure this week Ridley will squawk, Doug Pederson and/or Lawrence will talk about how they need to do a better job of getting the ball to Ridley, and he'll wind up catching 5 passes next week. In any case, Kirk is the No. 1 and I'm sorry I wasn't higher on him in the preseason. Agnew caught 4 passes and ran a little endaround, but he's more of a gadget for the Jaguars to mix in than a fantasy option.

Chris Olave saw a ridiculous 15 targets and caught 7 passes, but it's hard to contend that he's being used properly. The target he saw on the game-ending fourth down play; what was that? He's 6-0 and 187 pounds, is looking for him to make a lot of one-on-one contested catches really the way to go? Decent PPR game but the usage is weird. Michael Thomas would maybe have been better there (his touchdown was a similar kind of play) but Thomas just looks like he can't move anymore. Rashid Shaheed caught 4 passes on 8 targets, which was encouraging, but no big plays so he finished with just 28 yards, killing a couple of otherwise solid parlays (Kirk over, Ridley under) that I built. Shaheed did make a spectacular catch in the end zone but couldn’t get his second foot down. It's a mini-bye for the Saints so maybe they can go to the drawing board and figure out how to properly utilize these players.

TIGHT ENDS

Felt bad for Foster Moreau after his dropped touchdown. I'm sure he feels bad too. He's primarily a blocker but was a decent red-zone threat with the Raiders, but those are catches he's not as likely to make as pure receiving tight ends (and everyone drops passes). Jimmy Graham, perhaps, might have caught it, although Graham played 18 snaps without being targeted on a night his quarterback attempted 55 passes. They miss injured Juwan Johnson, too.

Evan Engram had a disappointing night, in the sense that he caught 2 passes on the first series but just 3 the rest of the way. Guess they liked Kirk's matchup more.

Here's the part of the write-up where I'm forced to discuss Taysom Hill, who scored his first touchdown on a run and has caught 11 passes for 99 yards the last two weeks. Sounds like a pretty nice PPR tight end. Will it continue? In the five previous games, he caught 4 passes, and had more than 21 total yards in one of them. I will never roster Hill. I will be happy when he retires (he's 33). Year after year the Saints get infatuated with using him for a couple of weeks, people start plugging him into lineups, and the team forgets about him. If you started him last night, congratulations. I will never recommend him, because year after year they prove not to use him reliably.

MISCELLANEOUS:

Entering the season, the Saints and Jaguars looked like the clear favorites in their respective divisions. That's still the case for Jacksonville, which has quietly moved to 5-2, and might be challenged by Houston (who beat them), but is certainly the betting favorite. The Saints look like they can play with almost anyone but also lose to almost anyone. The defense is very good but the offense is unreliable and frustrating. I think 9-8 might win the NFC South, but even if that's the Saints, it's hard to get behind them as a threat to advance in the playoffs.