Thanks for sharing not only the Jags story, but your story. I think the fact that this was a personal experience made it easier to empathize with you and other Jags fans. While not within the same context, I think many sports fans have felt similarly at one point or another, including myself.
On a lighter note, where do you place this Jags team amongst other teams of this era (was thinking 14-18 but there may be another timeframe that makes more sense)?
Thank you very much Marc! I voiced my concerns at the beginning that this wouldn't come out very well. Those concerns were very real. Normally I end up not very proud of my Jaguars work, but I quite like the way this turned out. If you don't mind my asking, what are your most heartbreaking moments, in football and in sports in general? I'd love to hear somebody else tell their story of a heartbreaking defeat.
Onto the second question, I think 2014-2018 is the right choice to define the era, because that was after the Broncos and Seahawks had aged out of being truly great teams (although they were still competitive ones), but before the Chiefs and Ravens come in in 2019 to jazz the league back up again. This leaves a very weak league for the whole 2014-2018 period. The Patriots were the lucky ones to not fall apart as the whole league aged out around them.
That being said, this 2017 Jaguar team is why I will forever insist that 2017 is the best playoff run either Tom Brady or the New England Patriots ever had, despite not winning a championship at the end of it. I don't know why the Brady stans don't talk about this more, because in the 'weak league' era, as I've always taken to calling it, after prime Manning but before prime Mahomes, I view the Jaguars as the second best team, and even this comes with a caveat, because the team I think is better than them is the 2015 Cardinals, and this only applies BEFORE the Carson Palmer injury.
It's either the Jags, with their best defence of all time, but fringe top ten offence, or the Arizona Cardinals with their EPAA+ of 130 (6th in 2015), and by far the best offence in the league before Carson broke his finger (which Larry Fitzgerald to this day says is the reason he never won a Super Bowl, and I agree with him). It's razor thin between these two options, but they are the two options, as from these two it's a long way down to the second tier, which consists of 2015 Panthers, 2014 Packers, 2018 Saints, who are all pretty similar in terms of quality to each other.
I hate to give a copout answer, and I hate having to talk about the 2015 Cardinals in general because the conversation always ends in copout answers, but if I can reserve the right to Carson Palmer having ten healthy fingers, I would pick the 2015 Cardinals, in a close fight. However, if Carson getting injured right at the end of the season was destiny, and I can't prevent it, I would pick this 2017 Jaguars team over their next closest competition (2015 Panthers) ten times out of ten.
I think your articles are important for keeping the memory of the 15 Cardinals and 17 Jaguars alive as these are the type of teams that are often lost to history.
It was a little unclear to me but would you put these teams over any Patriots team of this era?
Thank you my friend. These teams are like the team version of Trent Green. In my opinion, they're among the greatest of all time, but for whatever reason the NFL community treats them as if they were merely good. It feels like myself (and yourself) against the world sometimes trying to get my point across, but if I don't do it, who will?
When I said these two teams were one and two, I meant one and two. No Patriots team is even in the top five best teams of this era. Like I was saying in the other comment, this whole era was an exercise in the NFC failing to send its best team to the Super Bowl. I'll give you my top ten list of the weak league era:
2015 Cardinals
2017 Jaguars
2015 Panthers
2014 Packers
2018 Saints
2015 Seahawks
2016 Patriots
2018 Chiefs
2016 Falcons
2017 Eagles
You'll notice two things. First is that the 2015 NFC was loaded, so loaded that they all did double knockouts with each other, allowing the AFC to win the SB that year, and second is that all the competition was in the NFC in this era. Seven out of the top ten teams are over there, and the team that won the Super Bowl three times in these five years (Patriots) make this list just once. This is primarily because the NFC sent their best team to the Super Bowl just twice (2016, 2017) in this era.
I respect the 2016 version of the Patriots, who beat the best teams the league had to offer, but the 2014 version barely got out of there alive against the NFC's third best team. The 2017 version ought to have lost the AFC Championship, and did lose the Super Bowl, and the 2018 version got to play the NFC's third best team again.
You can only beat who is in front of you, and they do deserve their championships, but to somebody like me who is not a championship centrist, beating no top five teams on the way to a Super Bowl does not qualify you as a great team. I don't care about the championship. It's just a title. The real great teams are the ones that the Patriots missed, like the 2014 Packers, like the 2018 Saints, both of whom lost one possession playoff games, due primarily to randomness.
In this game, there's nothing you can do about that, which is why losing in the playoffs DOES NOT disqualify you from being a great team. It does in basketball, but it doesn't in this game. To me, one possession playoff results mean almost nothing, because you constantly run into things like this 2017 AFC Championship, where if the correct call had been made on the field, the Patriots would've lost. Since it wasn't, they won. That's just randomness. It has nothing to do with team quality. That to me is why championship centrism doesn't work in football like it does in other sports.
It's why I don't mind leaving three of the era's five champions off my best teams list. People who give lots of weight to championships (i.e. one possession playoff game results) will view that as blasphemy, but I don't.
I thought I had recently was that in the NFL, the regular season separates the good teams from the bad teams while the postseason separates the lucky from the unlucky.
There's an economics principle (I think you know I'm pursuing a PhD in economics, but if you don't, I am) that states that the closer two agents converge in terms of ability, the higher the chances that their market outcomes will be decided by something that isn't ability. The NFL and NHL and MLB playoffs run headlong into this principle almost every single year. Matching up two evenly matched teams is great in terms of entertainment value, but in terms of deciding who the better team is, it's quite possibly the worst imaginable way to do so.
As long as we accept that the champion is not the best team most of the time, this is okay, but when you make the claim that the best team is the champion, because they're the champion, I entirely disagree. More often than not, it's just the way the wind is blowing.
I'm not wholly willing to go as far as you went Marc, because occasionally there are multi-possession wins in playoff games, especially as we go further back in history. I hate to be THAT GUY, but this does mean to me that championships in years gone by tend to be worth more than championships now, because talent spreads used to be wider, and you could be more confident that the best team was the champion.
I don't think there is such a thing as an undeserving champion, because what makes you a deserving champion in the NFL is to win a three round, single elimination tournament. Every champion in history has done that, but not all deserving champions are great teams. Very far from.
#1 moment heartbreaking sports moments has got be the Warriors losing game 7 of the NBA finals in 2016. It is now more bittersweet as they ended winning 3 more championships and my home town team got its only title, but to this day I still haven't the 4th quarter of that game, even as some who likes Lebron James (though not at the time).
#2 would be the Seahawks losing the SB to the Patriots and in general any Tom Brady/Patriots playoff win from 2014-2020. I'm not sure if this game was the origin on me rooting against Brady, or if the reason I was heartbroken was because I was rooting against Brady. Thinking back on it, I'm not entirely sure why I was rooting for the Seahawks since they had demolished my favorite player's team the year before but I was pretty young back then so I don't think my rooting interest had much continuity.
#3 Is probably the Saints losing to the Rams in the 2018 NFC championships. I could also go with any Bills playoff lose in the past 3 seasons.
#4. If I had to add another one it be Michigan losing to Louisville in the National Championship back in 2013.
Those are all the ones I lived through, and then they are games I wasn't around for that as a fan suck but that would be a lot longer of list.
Are you not a fan of the Cavaliers? Why would that be a heartbreaking moment? It's heartbreaking to me because the championship centricity of the NBA causes that game to take the greatest team of all time from us, but why would it be heartbreaking to you?
Funnily enough, I was actually rooting for the Patriots in that 2014 Super Bowl, because that Seahawks team (and their fans) had become SO unlikeable at the time that even the Patriots seemed like a better alternative, so when New England snuck out of there with two late fourth quarter touchdowns to win a game they had no business winning, that actually made me very happy. The NFL community was so insistent that those Hawks were going to be a dynasty that I can't say that I wasn't happy when they fell well short of that.
If the 2018 Saints would've won the NFC Championship, they absolutely would've won the Super Bowl. A lot of the weak league era was an exercise in the NFC cannibalising itself, and the Patriots/Broncos taking on (and beating) a weak team in the Super Bowl. It would've been nice to see Drew Brees get another championship, after spending so much of a career spent on bad teams.
Despite living in Northeast Ohio my whole life, I've never been much of a Cavs fan. I became a huge Warriors fan during the 2015 season and rooted for them big time until they won their 4th championship of the Steph era. I was also rooting against Lebron at the time because I was a fan of his when he was with the Heat and cried when he came back to Cleveland (I know it is weird but I was like eight years old at the time so).
Thanks for sharing not only the Jags story, but your story. I think the fact that this was a personal experience made it easier to empathize with you and other Jags fans. While not within the same context, I think many sports fans have felt similarly at one point or another, including myself.
On a lighter note, where do you place this Jags team amongst other teams of this era (was thinking 14-18 but there may be another timeframe that makes more sense)?
Thank you very much Marc! I voiced my concerns at the beginning that this wouldn't come out very well. Those concerns were very real. Normally I end up not very proud of my Jaguars work, but I quite like the way this turned out. If you don't mind my asking, what are your most heartbreaking moments, in football and in sports in general? I'd love to hear somebody else tell their story of a heartbreaking defeat.
Onto the second question, I think 2014-2018 is the right choice to define the era, because that was after the Broncos and Seahawks had aged out of being truly great teams (although they were still competitive ones), but before the Chiefs and Ravens come in in 2019 to jazz the league back up again. This leaves a very weak league for the whole 2014-2018 period. The Patriots were the lucky ones to not fall apart as the whole league aged out around them.
That being said, this 2017 Jaguar team is why I will forever insist that 2017 is the best playoff run either Tom Brady or the New England Patriots ever had, despite not winning a championship at the end of it. I don't know why the Brady stans don't talk about this more, because in the 'weak league' era, as I've always taken to calling it, after prime Manning but before prime Mahomes, I view the Jaguars as the second best team, and even this comes with a caveat, because the team I think is better than them is the 2015 Cardinals, and this only applies BEFORE the Carson Palmer injury.
It's either the Jags, with their best defence of all time, but fringe top ten offence, or the Arizona Cardinals with their EPAA+ of 130 (6th in 2015), and by far the best offence in the league before Carson broke his finger (which Larry Fitzgerald to this day says is the reason he never won a Super Bowl, and I agree with him). It's razor thin between these two options, but they are the two options, as from these two it's a long way down to the second tier, which consists of 2015 Panthers, 2014 Packers, 2018 Saints, who are all pretty similar in terms of quality to each other.
I hate to give a copout answer, and I hate having to talk about the 2015 Cardinals in general because the conversation always ends in copout answers, but if I can reserve the right to Carson Palmer having ten healthy fingers, I would pick the 2015 Cardinals, in a close fight. However, if Carson getting injured right at the end of the season was destiny, and I can't prevent it, I would pick this 2017 Jaguars team over their next closest competition (2015 Panthers) ten times out of ten.
I think your articles are important for keeping the memory of the 15 Cardinals and 17 Jaguars alive as these are the type of teams that are often lost to history.
It was a little unclear to me but would you put these teams over any Patriots team of this era?
Thank you my friend. These teams are like the team version of Trent Green. In my opinion, they're among the greatest of all time, but for whatever reason the NFL community treats them as if they were merely good. It feels like myself (and yourself) against the world sometimes trying to get my point across, but if I don't do it, who will?
When I said these two teams were one and two, I meant one and two. No Patriots team is even in the top five best teams of this era. Like I was saying in the other comment, this whole era was an exercise in the NFC failing to send its best team to the Super Bowl. I'll give you my top ten list of the weak league era:
2015 Cardinals
2017 Jaguars
2015 Panthers
2014 Packers
2018 Saints
2015 Seahawks
2016 Patriots
2018 Chiefs
2016 Falcons
2017 Eagles
You'll notice two things. First is that the 2015 NFC was loaded, so loaded that they all did double knockouts with each other, allowing the AFC to win the SB that year, and second is that all the competition was in the NFC in this era. Seven out of the top ten teams are over there, and the team that won the Super Bowl three times in these five years (Patriots) make this list just once. This is primarily because the NFC sent their best team to the Super Bowl just twice (2016, 2017) in this era.
I respect the 2016 version of the Patriots, who beat the best teams the league had to offer, but the 2014 version barely got out of there alive against the NFC's third best team. The 2017 version ought to have lost the AFC Championship, and did lose the Super Bowl, and the 2018 version got to play the NFC's third best team again.
You can only beat who is in front of you, and they do deserve their championships, but to somebody like me who is not a championship centrist, beating no top five teams on the way to a Super Bowl does not qualify you as a great team. I don't care about the championship. It's just a title. The real great teams are the ones that the Patriots missed, like the 2014 Packers, like the 2018 Saints, both of whom lost one possession playoff games, due primarily to randomness.
In this game, there's nothing you can do about that, which is why losing in the playoffs DOES NOT disqualify you from being a great team. It does in basketball, but it doesn't in this game. To me, one possession playoff results mean almost nothing, because you constantly run into things like this 2017 AFC Championship, where if the correct call had been made on the field, the Patriots would've lost. Since it wasn't, they won. That's just randomness. It has nothing to do with team quality. That to me is why championship centrism doesn't work in football like it does in other sports.
It's why I don't mind leaving three of the era's five champions off my best teams list. People who give lots of weight to championships (i.e. one possession playoff game results) will view that as blasphemy, but I don't.
I thought I had recently was that in the NFL, the regular season separates the good teams from the bad teams while the postseason separates the lucky from the unlucky.
There's an economics principle (I think you know I'm pursuing a PhD in economics, but if you don't, I am) that states that the closer two agents converge in terms of ability, the higher the chances that their market outcomes will be decided by something that isn't ability. The NFL and NHL and MLB playoffs run headlong into this principle almost every single year. Matching up two evenly matched teams is great in terms of entertainment value, but in terms of deciding who the better team is, it's quite possibly the worst imaginable way to do so.
As long as we accept that the champion is not the best team most of the time, this is okay, but when you make the claim that the best team is the champion, because they're the champion, I entirely disagree. More often than not, it's just the way the wind is blowing.
I'm not wholly willing to go as far as you went Marc, because occasionally there are multi-possession wins in playoff games, especially as we go further back in history. I hate to be THAT GUY, but this does mean to me that championships in years gone by tend to be worth more than championships now, because talent spreads used to be wider, and you could be more confident that the best team was the champion.
I don't think there is such a thing as an undeserving champion, because what makes you a deserving champion in the NFL is to win a three round, single elimination tournament. Every champion in history has done that, but not all deserving champions are great teams. Very far from.
#1 moment heartbreaking sports moments has got be the Warriors losing game 7 of the NBA finals in 2016. It is now more bittersweet as they ended winning 3 more championships and my home town team got its only title, but to this day I still haven't the 4th quarter of that game, even as some who likes Lebron James (though not at the time).
#2 would be the Seahawks losing the SB to the Patriots and in general any Tom Brady/Patriots playoff win from 2014-2020. I'm not sure if this game was the origin on me rooting against Brady, or if the reason I was heartbroken was because I was rooting against Brady. Thinking back on it, I'm not entirely sure why I was rooting for the Seahawks since they had demolished my favorite player's team the year before but I was pretty young back then so I don't think my rooting interest had much continuity.
#3 Is probably the Saints losing to the Rams in the 2018 NFC championships. I could also go with any Bills playoff lose in the past 3 seasons.
#4. If I had to add another one it be Michigan losing to Louisville in the National Championship back in 2013.
Those are all the ones I lived through, and then they are games I wasn't around for that as a fan suck but that would be a lot longer of list.
Are you not a fan of the Cavaliers? Why would that be a heartbreaking moment? It's heartbreaking to me because the championship centricity of the NBA causes that game to take the greatest team of all time from us, but why would it be heartbreaking to you?
Funnily enough, I was actually rooting for the Patriots in that 2014 Super Bowl, because that Seahawks team (and their fans) had become SO unlikeable at the time that even the Patriots seemed like a better alternative, so when New England snuck out of there with two late fourth quarter touchdowns to win a game they had no business winning, that actually made me very happy. The NFL community was so insistent that those Hawks were going to be a dynasty that I can't say that I wasn't happy when they fell well short of that.
If the 2018 Saints would've won the NFC Championship, they absolutely would've won the Super Bowl. A lot of the weak league era was an exercise in the NFC cannibalising itself, and the Patriots/Broncos taking on (and beating) a weak team in the Super Bowl. It would've been nice to see Drew Brees get another championship, after spending so much of a career spent on bad teams.
Despite living in Northeast Ohio my whole life, I've never been much of a Cavs fan. I became a huge Warriors fan during the 2015 season and rooted for them big time until they won their 4th championship of the Steph era. I was also rooting against Lebron at the time because I was a fan of his when he was with the Heat and cried when he came back to Cleveland (I know it is weird but I was like eight years old at the time so).