- Super Bowl Championships: 0
- Last Super Bowl Appearance: N/A
- Claim to Fame: Made the playoffs in four of their first five seasons in the NFL
- Claim to Shame: Zero playoff appearances from 2008-2016, and posted a 17-63 record from 2012-2016
It’s been an up and down roller coaster for the Jacksonville Jaguars since entering the NFL with the Carolina Panthers in 1995.
It didn’t take long for the team to find success, winning division titles in both 1998 and 1999.
But their first real brush with fame came in the ’97 season, when the Jaguars went into Mile High Stadium in Denver and upset the top seed in the AFC Divisional Round.
By 2000, however, the young franchise was middling, having just two double-digit win seasons in 16 years. They bottomed out in 2016 when they finished 3-13.
That changed in 2017, though, as the Jaguars became one of the best young teams in the league.
It started with a front office regime headed by Tom Coughlin – the same head coach that marched the Jags into their first ever pro football game – limiting the mistakes of young quarterback Blake Bortles and turning him into a game manager.
It worked: Bortles enjoyed his highest completion percentage as a pro, while throwing his lowest number of interceptions in his four-year career (13). He still added 21 touchdown passes, but did it on 102 fewer attempts than in 2016.
Jacksonville rode its dominant defense and Bortles’ game-management to a 10-6 record, their first winning season since 2007, and went all the way to the AFC Championship game, where they lost to New England 24-20. But then everything fell apart in 2018. Bortles regressed, so did the defense, and the Jags won just 5 games.
That led the team to finally cut ties with its disappointing QB, bringing in Philadelphia’s Super Bowl 52 hero Nick Foles in his place. If Foles can lead the offense to league-average heights, the defense still has the pieces to dominate.
Led by the ball-hawking corner duo of Jalen Ramsey and AJ Bouye, the Jaguars front seven should be free to feast on opposing QBs. They tied for the league lead in sacks with 55 in 2017, with veteran free agent acquisition Calais Campbell posting 14.5 on his own. Those numbers, like all their numbers, fell back to the pack in 2018, but there’s optimism that the defense can be monstrous again in 2019.
