Jacksonville Jaguars named as second-likeliest team to end Super Bowl drought next
By Billy Long
The Jacksonville Jaguars are being viewed as a team that can climb the mountaintop and claim the team’s first ever championship in the near future.
When the Philadelphia Eagles dethroned the New England Patriots 41-33 in Minneapolis, it was the franchise’s first ever Super Bowl title.
With the Eagles scratching their name off the list of the win-less when it comes to the Lombardi Trophy, twelve teams now remain in the hunt for a first Super Bowl championship.
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Dan Hanzus, of NFL.com, ranked the twelve teams in order of who is most likely to end their respective droughts first, and listed the Jacksonville Jaguars as the second-likeliest team to win the Super Bowl first from the group:
Jacksonville is placed only behind the other team that fell short on conference championship Sunday last season, the Minnesota Vikings, but it is easy to see the potential in the Jaguars reaching the ultimate destination in the next few years. The team reached the AFC title game and the majority of the core impact players will be returning in 2018 for a shot at redemption.
But instead of pointing out the talented and mostly young roster in Jacksonville, Hanzus went with the repetitive narrative and harbored on Blake Bortles:
"2. Jaguars: Here’s the team that should have been the favorite to land Cousins but instead locked themselves into another year of Blake Bortles. We’ll see how all that works out. In fairness, Bortles wasn’t a total albatross in the playoffs and Jacksonville pretty much beat itself in the AFC title game. The Jaguars are close, but the Bortles dilemma continues to hang over the franchise."
It’s fair to say that there is some uncertainty with Bortles’ play, but to fully state that “the Bortles dilemma continues to hang over the franchise” is excessive. The Jaguars were in the AFC Championship game with help from Bortles, not despite him, and the team was ten minutes away from taking last season all the way to Super Bowl 52.
Why with the defense poised to only get better, with the presumed return of Allen Robinson, and pending additions in free agency and the draft, couldn’t the team take one more step forward with Blake Bortles?
The Jacksonville Jaguars made a monumental leap in 2017, and has all the makings of a team that can hoist the Lombardi Trophy very soon.