Jaguars fans must trust new regime and their decision-making
By Jeff Tice
If you are a long-time fan of the Jacksonville Jaguars, you can be forgiven for losing perspective on occasion. You’ve suffered through a lot over the past 20 years or so, without a lot of good times to show for it.
If you are the sort of fan who follows things like the final 53 cuts and waiver wire claims, the kind who really gets down in the weeds on a daily basis, it’s completely forgivable to have lost track of how things are supposed to look.
"“Now, we take a look at arguably the deepest position on the Jaguars’ entire roster: The wide receiver room.” – John Shipley, Jaguar Report June 24, 2021"
This sort of long-term exposure to bad football can have some unexpected results. The most common is when a fanbase thinks they have a good player on their team, only to later discover that player is not that good after all.
For example, going into last season, Brandon Eisenman at Last Word on Sports and John Shipley at Jaguar Report thought the Jaguars’ wide receiver room was stacked.
"The Jacksonville Jaguars 2021 wide receiver depth is stacked from top to bottom. – Brandon Eisenman, LWOS July 31, 2021"
Oof. The point here is not to rake Shipley or Eisenman or anyone else over the coals because they whiffed on their evaluation of the Jags receiving corps going into last season. A lot of people did, and if you’re going to make projections, you are going to miss once in a while.
Jaguars fans have had to endure years of losing
The point is going into last season most people thought the Jags were set at wide receiver, and that could have been because it’s been so long since the Jags had a good wide receiver room, they lost track of what one looked like.
It’s not normal for franchises to be this bad for this long. Sure, fans in Detroit and Cleveland might share a similar perspective, but that’s about it. Other teams, even mediocre ones, give their fans more regular ebbs and flows that make it easier to maintain their exuberance.
But, if you are a Jacksonville Jaguars supporter, you’ve been forced to endure too many bad seasons for too long, and that can make it easy to think you’re holding a bag of gold instead of a bag of… something else.