The Jaguars are coming and nobody gives a damn
COMMENTARY
If you’re heading to the game this weekend, congratulations on the free tickets.
Inevitably, the allure of welcoming another NFL season back into our good graces takes an early-season, sharp turn into banality. Welcome to that week.
Last year, it was the Oakland Raiders — a franchise that hasn’t made the postseason since their Super Bowl loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2003 — who landed on the New England Patriots’ 2014 September schedule, nearly upsetting the eventual Super Bowl champs in a too-close-for-comfort 16-9 Patriots win at Gillette Stadium. In 2013, the Buccaneers played the role of early-season lackey, with the Patriots trouncing them, 23-3. Tampa Bay hasn’t sniffed the postseason in eight years.
This year, it’s perhaps the worst of the league’s also-ran entries. The Jacksonville Jaguars, an NFL franchise that does the impossible in managing to be just as sapless as the generic Floridian strip mall it calls home, are in Foxborough Sunday for an afternoon that should welcome a fair number of hand-me-downs from season-ticket holders, who, frankly, deserve to watch this one from afar.
There’s a first time for everything, but if you expect such things to come in the form of a Jaguars win this Sunday, you might as well go back to dreaming about there never being a 20-minute wait at your random Applebee’s within Jacksonville city limits.
The Jaguars, a member of the expansion class of 1995 along with the Carolina Panthers, have never beaten the Patriots during the regular season. There was that 1998 wild card playoff game to speak of, won by Jacksonville, 25-10, a game minus injured quarterback Drew Bledsoe and wide receiver Terry Glenn and a Mark Brunell who presumably was able to fight through the tears to lead Jacksonville to victory.
Of course, there are also the other three postseason losses to speak of; in the 1996 AFC Championship Game, the 2005 wild card game, and in the 2007 playoffs, when Jacksonville played sacrificial lamb in what would become New England’s infamous 18-1 season.
In fact, since that game, the Jaguars franchise has managed to win all of 34 games. The Patriots have won 38 games since the start of the 2012 season.
That was the same year these two last met, a less-than-three-year span that doesn’t quite seem long enough. After all, every head coach welcomes a cupcake on the schedule for his 53-man roster every now and again. Hell, Bill Belichick has had three of them, twice a year, for the better part of the last decade in the AFC East.
“It’s a little bit of a different week, a team we don’t know very much,’’ said Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, who has 14 more regular season wins (162) in his career than the Jaguars have (148) in franchise history. “They got off to a better start this year than they have in the past, and it was a big win against the Dolphins last week. So, I’m sure they’ll be fired up, ready to go, and hopefully we can bring the same level of energy.’’
True, the Jaguars are already one-third of the way to their 2014 win total after upsetting the Miami Dolphins last weekend, a veritable watershed moment for a team that has managed to win all of nine games the previous three seasons combined.
Of course, the embarrassment extends beyond the playing field. Remember the “Jaguaring’’ movement?
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Woof.
Let’s face it, there are cities that simply shouldn’t have professional sports franchises. The NHL’s Coyotes never belonged in Phoenix. The NBA heading to Vancouver was a riot. For some reason, they still play Major League Baseball in Tampa Bay.
Jacksonville is far and away the NFL’s stain in the annals of “What the **** were we thinking?’’ The fact that EverBank Field and Jacksonville actually hosted a Super Bowl is a mind-boggling feat that is somewhat akin to the Summer Olympics being tabbed for Fall River.
According to the recently-released Forbes listings of professional sports franchise rankings, the Jaguars’ “45,000 person season ticket base was one of the lowest in the NFL in 2014 and the season ticket renewal rate was 83 percent, while most teams are north of 90 percent.’’ This is the only team that the NFL doesn’t mind shipping off to London once a year, which says little about the league’s international diplomacy.
If the NFL were to set up shop permanently overseas, is there any question which franchise would be exported?
It’s not only that the Jaguars suck, but worse, they don’t matter. They barely register a blip in their own hometown, never mind the greater landscape of the NFL. Quarterback Blake Bortles may be an up-and-coming star. He could also be the next David Garrard.
“It’s one of the best defensive fronts in football, so it’s tough to run it,’’ Brady said a few days after the Pats touched the much-ballyhooed front four in Buffalo. “They overload you at times with the scheme, so we’ve got to be prepared for a very physical game. It’s a very physical defense.’’
What Brady meant there was, “Yawn.’’
The Patriots are favored by 13 1/2 points on Sunday. No doubt they’ll cover.
The Jacksonville Jaguars are coming. It’s a call that’s every bit as uninspiring as it is threatening.
And imminently forgettable.
This is how awesome it is to be a Boston sports fan
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