The Jaguars Finally Rank First In Something Besides Ineptitude

We would like to use this moment to offer a formal apology to the Jacksonville Jaguars. Over the past few years, pointing out Jacksonville’s many hilarious inadequacies has been one of our favorite hobbies (like we did here, here and here). And on occasion, we’ve gone out of our way to insert jokes about the Jaguars into articles that weren’t even about them (such as here and here). In our defense, they did deserve it: Between 2011 and 2016, Jacksonville won just 22 games — the fewest in the NFL. But this season, no one is laughing about the Jaguars, who are 5-3 and tied for first place in the AFC South. For the first time since 2010, the Jags have an Elo rating of more than 1500, meaning that after seven years, they’re finally an above average team again.¹³

The last time Jacksonville was this good, the Apple iPad was just a few months old, “The Social Network” had just been released, and the Chicago Bears were playoff-bound. And the Jaguars aren’t just above average. With their 23-7 win over the Bengals in Week 9, the Jags now have an 83 percent chance of making the postseason for the first time since 2007, according to our NFL Elo predictions. While much-maligned (by us) quarterback Blake Bortles has shown marginal improvements this year, it’s been the defense that’s had the biggest influence on the Jaguars’ winning ways. (“Jaguars” and “winning ways” sounds so strange to say aloud.)

In the past two drafts, almost two-thirds of Jacksonville’s picks have been on the defensive end, including Yannick Ngakoue, who has 6.5 sacks so far this season. In free agency this year, the Jags signed Calais Campbell to a four-year, $60 million deal, and Campbell currently leads the league in sacks with 11. The dividends this season of the team’s focus on defense have been tremendous: Through Week 9, the Jags rank No. 1 in the league in points per game allowed with just 14.6 and expected points added with 11 per game.

The Jags’ rapid ascent to the top of the league’s defensive rankings has been sudden, so you’d be forgiven for missing it. Of their eight games so far this year, they’ve held opposing teams to 7 points or fewer in four of them (most in the NFL), compared with zero all of last year. And they’re not just the best in 2017. Seth Walder of the ESPN Stats & Information Group neatly detailed before Week 9 that the Jags’ secondary is on pace to become the best pass defense since 2006 — yes, better than the Legion of Boom. From an overall view, of the 10 defenses with the highest expected points added per game since 2006, only Ray Lewis’s 2008 Baltimore Ravens rank ahead of Doug Marrone’s defense.

Another half of the football season still remains, and Jacksonville has work to do to ensure a playoff berth. But their chances of making the postseason are partly predicated on the strength of their remaining schedule: Of their eight remaining games, the Jags have a higher Elo rating than seven of their opponents. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll finish with a 12-4 record — they do play four of those remaining games on the road, and they are still the Jaguars after all. (Sorry, we had to slip one more in.)

FiveThirtyEight vs. The Readers

Week 9 in the NFL saw plenty of teams fighting for their playoff spots — in some cases quite literally. Jacksonville’s Jalen Ramsey and Cincinnati’s A.J. Green’s double ejection sparked an all-out brawl. And things got heated in New Orleans when the Saints and Buccaneers got into it on the Tampa Bay sideline. In our NFL prediction game this week — in which we invite you to outsmart our Elo algorithm — the readers had a couple of double-digit wins, the largest of which came as the Lions beat the Packers on the road to net the readers a whopping 18.8 points. For some reason, Elo picked Jay Cutler and Miami and was punished for doing so in the Raiders’ 27-24 win over the Dolphins, which netted readers 12.4 points. Make sure you get your Week 10 predictions in early — see you next week.