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My NFL loyalties are split, in a complicated dance, between the Chargers and Jaguars. (The 2022 AFC Wild Card game was one of the strangest sports watching experiences of my life.) Both teams are in a somewhat similar position, and my excitement for the upcoming season is about the same for either team.
In terms of QB, the Chargers have the obvious advantage; Justin Herbert is a more experienced, more proven, more well-rounded, and significantly less turnover-prone than Trevor Lawrence. The Chargers also have the clear advantage on the offensive line, with maybe the best young tackle tandem in the AFC. The Jaguars’ offensive line, while they’ve hopefully patched the disastrous liability at center, is still a bottom-6 O-line, which risks yet another year of Lawrence scrambling for his life and unable to manifest his sky-high potential. The Jaguars do, though, have a very impressive group of offensive weapons around Lawrence, and if the O-line play is even league-average I expect a very effective passing offense. The Chargers’ passing game, on the other hand, is a giant question mark. Having lost veteran pass-catchers Keenan Allen and Mike Williams in the off-season, Herbert will be offloading passes to… Josh Palmer? Rookie Ladd McConkey? First-round-bust-in-the-making Quentin Johnston? With the addition of Jim Harbaugh as head coach - a move which increased my confidence in this team by about 5000% - and Greg Roman at OC, I expect the Bolts to run the ball approximately 900 times a game; they even directly imported the RB duo from the Ravens’ last few seasons.
Both teams suffer from the same fundamental flaw, though, which is that they stand almost no chance of being the best team in their respective divisions. The Chiefs are the undisputed best team in the AFC, and nothing I saw from them last night caused me to question this. The odds of the Chargers making it out of that division intact, let alone out of the AFC playoffs, are nonexistent. The Jaguars do not have to compete within their division with a buzzsaw quite as comprehensively unstoppable as KC, but they will be facing the seemingly ascendant Texans - freshly bolstered by the additions of Stefon Diggs, Joe Mixon, and the expected stratospheric second-year leap by CJ Stroud (the centerpiece of my fantasy football team, which is projected to win my league) who have all of the pieces to challenge for the upper echelon of offenses in the entire league. I just don’t think the Jags can measure up against that, especially not with our piss-poor defensive backfield.
I expect an encouraging leap from both teams in the regular season, dashed hopes in the early round of the playoffs, and a spectacular triumph for my fantasy team.
How did you end up with those teams? Do you think the jags will ever pull off moving to London like they've wanted to for years?
I was raised a San Diego Chargers fan, but in college I started to drift away from the fandom; the team was bad, enthusiasm for them in the city was waning, and frankly I was just a young contrarian who wanted to forge my own path and pick a team for myself instead of just inheriting an unchosen fandom. Then when the Chargers moved to LA I fully severed myself from them. I needed a team, and a lot of things about the Jags attracted me: underdog/hipster appeal, cool uniforms, the uniqueness of being the only Jaguars fan I know, no history of success I needed to acquaint myself with or pretend to be emotionally invested in, etc.
I dove into the fandom feet-first, and within a few years I was riding high on the 2017 Sacksonville team that made it all the way to the AFCCG (and should have gone to the Super Bowl - Myles Jack wasn’t down, and that wasn’t a PI by AJ Bouye). Then everything fell apart from there; the Sacksonville defense immediately imploded, Jalen Ramsey gave in to his inner diva, the Nick Foles experiment exploded on the runway, the Minshew Magic meme seasons stopped being funny very quickly, and the Urban Meyer trainwreck especially seemed to prove just how awfully-run this franchise is.
Right around that same time, the sting of the Chargers abandoning San Diego started to fade, my diehard Chargers fan buddy started haranguing me to come back home to the team, and a lot of things about the Chargers were trending upward. (Justin Herbert, in particular, is just a very appealing guy to root for.) Simultaneously, I started regretting abandoning the team I was raised with, and as I began planning to move out of San Diego, the prospect of bringing my hometown team fandom (sorry, they will always be the San Diego Chargers, and nobody in Los Angeles will ever organically care about them) with me wherever I go started to become very appealing. Plus it will give me something to share and discuss with my mom, who never wavered in her fandom. So, now I’m sort of caught between two fandoms, uneasily hoping that I don’t have to witness the two of them directly competing for anything meaningful anytime soon.
Oh god, this again. The team is not moving to London, and it is not leaving Jacksonville. Shad Khan has poured obscene amounts of money into the city, the stadium renovation, the entertainment complex around the venue, etc. I think that maybe early on when he bought the team he genuinely hoped to move it to the UK, but in the intervening years all evidence points to him making peace with the fact that the move will never happen, and embracing making Jacksonville a more attractive destination for both players and fans. I’ll be shocked if the team ever plays more than four games a year in the UK, for the reasons I’ve listed, and for pure logistical reasons as well.
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