The Jacksonville Jaguars have spent the past decade being one of the worst teams in the NFL.
That trend is continuing in 2021 as the team is now 2-10 after an ugly 37-7 beatdown against the Los Angeles Rams on Sunday.
The loss ensured the Jaguars will have yet another 10-loss season, which marks 10 such occasions in the last 11 years.
So what about that other year?
ESPN’s Field Yates highlighted just how wild that lone exception is in hindsight.
The Jaguars have now lost at least 10 games in 10 of the last 11 seasons.
In 2017, they went 10-6 and made the AFC Championship game.
That has to the strangest season by a team in NFL History.
— Field Yates (@FieldYates) December 5, 2021
The 2017 Jaguars broke all the trends and went 10-6, nearly reaching the Super Bowl.
That season is just the most recent example of false long-term hope provided by the organization.
A Fascinating Franchise History
The Jaguars came into existence back in 1995 with a 4-12 record.
Yet they went 9-7 and reached the AFC Championship Game just one year later.
That marked a stretch of four consecutive postseason berths that ended in 1999 with another loss in the conference title game.
The Jaguars went a franchise-record 14-2 in that 1999 season.
2000-2004 saw the Jaguars held out of the postseason, but they returned in 2005 with a 12-4 record.
The 2007 squad made the playoffs as well, falling to the New England Patriots in the Divisional Round.
For those keeping track, the Patriots have eliminated the Jaguars from the playoffs four separate times.
The closest affair came in the 2017 AFC Championship Game.
It was a 24-20 final that needed a Tom Brady comeback to get New England into the Super Bowl.
While Jaguars fans may have thought their team was back for good, double-digit losing seasons have followed every year since.
The fact Blake Bortles nearly led the Jaguars to the Super Bowl remains a shocking bit of NFL history.
Even “generational” prospects are usually not immune to bad landing spots.
The Jaguars have done a terrible job of developing Trevor Lawrence during his rookie season. Simply unacceptable. pic.twitter.com/SdhE17Vtdo
— Brett Kollmann (@BrettKollmann) December 6, 2021
Jacksonville is now looking for sustained success with Trevor Lawrence under center and Urban Meyer manning the sidelines.
But it will take more than one winning season to convince a fanbase that has seen one good year lead to another terrible stretch of losing.
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