The Jacksonville Jaguars are riding high after an impressive 45-42 win in the division round of the AFC playoffs. The franchise that has not made the playoffs for a decade and spent most of that time with large tarps blacking out thousands of seats at EverBank Field are heading to the AFC title game for the 3rd time in their 22-year team history.
Jacksonville has long been the butt of NFL fans’ jokes prior to the 2017 season and from 2012-2016, the team only managed 17 total wins. Strangely enough, 2013 was the first year that the Kansas City Chiefs ushered in the Andy Reid era with a 28-8 victory over Gus Bradley and Blaine Gabbert’s hapless Jags and went on to win 53 regular season games from 2013 to 2017.
The Chiefs have been a steady force in the NFL’s regular season throughout that time, yet remain the exact same franchise today that they were when they blasted the Jaguars in September of 2013. Andy Reid’s Chiefs are now an inexcusable 1-4 in playoff appearances and have yet to reach even the AFC championship game. In fact, the Chiefs have only managed a single appearance in the conference championship game in 48 years, a game quarterbacked by Joe Montana on a bitterly cold Buffalo afternoon in January of 1994.
So is it luck or pure happenstance that a team like Jacksonville is able to right the ship and contend in the playoffs despite having a roster severely lacking in post-season experience? Regardless of the Jaguars’ result next Sunday in New England (smart money says it won’t go the way of the Blake Bortles-led Jags), the Chiefs now have no choice or excuse not to open their eyes with the primary focus being to build a roster around a young, gunslinger quarterback.
Tom Brady and Ben Roethlisberger’s days are numbered and with teams having post-season success with shotty quarterback play, there is no reason that Chiefs fans should have to continue watching the same old disasters occur.
The Chiefs are not quite all alone when it comes to playoff futility. Only the Browns, Lions, Bills (tied with Chiefs), Dolphins, Redskins and Bengals boast longer conference championship appearance droughts. The Redskins…well, we are going to let them off the hook considering they did win the Superbowl in 1992.
