Mark Woods: Jaguars give fans what they deserve — a season full of good drama
This is what Jaguars fans deserve.
Let me back up and say I typed that above sentence before Saturday night, before the Jaguars played what Mayor Lenny Curry described as the biggest regular-season game in franchise history.
I’m not sure it is indeed the biggest. Maybe. But it’s always tough to top a first — in the case of the Jaguars, a 1995 opener against the Houston Oilers that filled the stadium with more than 72,000 fans and the city with the kind of buzz that is hard to ever repeat.
A lot has happened in the 28 seasons since. The Oilers moved to Nashville and became the Tennessee Titans. Jacksonville Municipal Stadium became Alltel Stadium, EverBank Field and TIAA Bank Field.
With the sale of TIAA Bank in November, the future includes a new name and, beyond that, likely a stadium renovation. (I still say “Maxwell House” would be the great name/sponsor for a stadium in a downtown with the scent of roasting coffee.)
But first, this big rematch with the old Oilers, the team that Bud Adams moved to Tennessee in 1997, creating what became the Jaguars' fiercest rivalry.
From Urban Meyer dancing to endzone celebrations
There are fans who had tickets for this game who were at that season opener in 1995, who have sat through hundreds of games, from preseason to London, from scorching heat to freezing rain. This 2023 Bud is for you.
While you deserve credit for sticking with the team through thick and thinner-than-Blake Bortles-hair (and I use this analogy as a fellow follicly-challenged person), I’m not going to be one of those who says it’s anyone’s civic duty to buy tickets to an NFL game, or even to watch games on TV. (It’s worth repeating that the latter is how the NFL makes more than $10 billion a year. So simply by sitting through all those Allstate and State Farm ads, you’re supporting the NFL.)
I could go on a rant about sportscasters who call it embarrassing when there are empty seats at an NFL game, or about cities and leaders who prioritize being known as a “good sports town.” I could say that there are more troubling things than empty seats and wish as much time and money was devoted to being known as a good town for other things.
But I’ll save that for another day. I get it. Sports do inspire civic pride in a way that isn’t completely rational. And this turnaround has been fun.
The Jaguars have gone from video of Urban Meyer dancing with a woman in an Ohio bar to video of Rayshawn Jenkins dancing into the endzone with a Dak Prescott pass; from Trent-Baalke-must-go to, hey, maybe the general manager deserves some credit; from a regular-season finale with fans dressed as clowns to one with a packed house and playoff hopes.
For those who do go to Jaguars games — and never stopped going — this is what you deserve. And I’d say that win or lose Saturday night.
One thing's for certain: This season wasn't boring
The traditional Monday morning gauge is black or white, win or lose.
Win and all is right. Lose and all is wrong.
I’ve done this both as a sportswriter and as a fan. And to a degree, it’s understandable. But I don’t think what NFL fans deserve when they follow a team necessarily is victory. What they deserve is a team that’s competitive, that provides drama (and not that off-the-field kind).
In a league built for parity, it’s very hard to keep winning. It’s also hard to keep losing. And for more than a decade, with the exception of the 2017 season (which led to the “Myles Jack wasn’t down” AFC title game five years ago), the Jaguars put together a truly remarkable run of awful games and horrible seasons.
One of their sins: They managed to consistently make games boring.
It wasn’t just that they lost. It was that so many of their games were lost before halftime, so many of their seasons finished by Thanksgiving. By December it often was all over but the shouting of “the Jaguars select …”
At the beginning of this season, when another list ranked Jaguars fans as among the NFL’s "weakest," I defended the fans who had toughed it out through everything from blistering sun to fleeting Urban Meyer — and hoped that they would get some cloud cover in September and a meaningful game in January.
That happened.
As I type this, I don’t know the final score from Saturday night. I don’t know if the Jaguars beat the Titans again or if their longtime rival added a chapter to go alongside the heartbreak of the Music City Miracle in 2000. I don’t know if Trevor Lawrence threw for four touchdowns, or Yulee’s Derrick Henry ran for another 100 yards, or if an unlikely hero emerged.
But I do know that this is what Jaguars fans deserve. Having exciting finishes. To games and to a season. Having reasons to watch most games all the way to the fourth quarter. And by the end of the season, having a game with more than a draft pick on the line.
mwoods@jacksonville.com
(904) 359-4212
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Jaguars finally gave fans reason to keep watching
