Jacksonville Jaguars one of the least likely teams to end Super Bowl Drought
By Daniel Lago
While they were painfully close to making it twice in their history, the Jacksonville Jaguars almost certainly won’t be in this year’s Super Bowl.
The Jacksonville Jaguars have a strong claim as the team with the quickest start as a franchise in modern professional sports. After a relatively average inaugural season that saw the team go 4-12, the Jaguars miraculously squeaked into the playoffs in 1996 and orchestrated two of the biggest upsets in playoff history before falling to the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship Game.
The Jaguars were a perennial playoff team for the next several seasons, culminating in one of the most dominant campaigns in recent memory in 1999. The Jaguars went 14-2 and only one team kept them from making the Super Bowl – the Tennessee Titans.
Since then, the Jaguars have mired in misery with only one playoff win to their resume.
They are currently one of the only teams in the NFL to never make a Super Bowl and that doesn’t look likely to change this year.
John Breech over at CBS Sports looked at all the teams currently owning a lengthy Super Bowl drought. He ranked them all in order of most likely to end that streak to least likely – the Jaguars of course came in near the bottom:
"12. New York Jets11. Cleveland Browns10. Jacksonville JaguarsIn Jacksonville, the Jaguars actually seem to have a lot of talent on paper, but if there’s one thing we’ve learned about the Jags, it’s that their paper talent never seems to translate to success on the field.The Jaguars are one of three teams on the drought list that has never played in a Super Bowl."
Ouch.
It’s painful to see the Jaguars lumped in with the Jets and Browns, but you can’t really argue with it. The Jaguars have been a joke for the better part of a decade and they’ve destroyed any goodwill nationally after failing to live up the hype for a few seasons in a row.
The Jaguars will almost certainly be a better team in 2017, but it would be perhaps the biggest upset in sports history if they made the Super Bowl.
Let’s do it Blake!