There haven’t been a lot of notable moments for the Jacksonville Jaguars over the last two decades. The team burst onto the scene as an expansion team, making it to the AFC Championship in its second year of existence in 1996. After going 4-12 during its inaugural season in 1995, the team made the playoffs the next four seasons, returning to the AFC Championship Game again in 1999.
But the new millennium brought new struggles for the Jags. In 2002, coach Tom Coughlin was fired after three straight losing seasons, and the team made the playoffs just once from 2000-06, losing in the wild-card round in 2005.
An 11-5 season in 2007 saw the team earn its first (and only) playoff win of the decade, but it proved to be an outlier. The Jaguars didn’t return to the postseason until 2017 when it once again couldn’t get beyond the conference title game.
Since 2003, the Jags have just four winning seasons, which ties with the Detroit Lions and (surprisingly) the San Francisco 49ers for 28th in the NFL. The latter turned those four seasons into two Super Bowl and two NFC Championship Game appearances.
Only two teams in that span have fewer winning seasons than Jacksonville: The Cleveland Browns (two) and the Oakland/Las Vegas Raiders (one). Between a playoff season in 2002 and the 11-5 season in 2020, the Browns had just one winning season, an outlier 10-6 year under Romeo Crennel in 2007.
For the Raiders, the fall was much worse. The team made it to the Super Bowl after the 2002 season, but it wouldn’t top eight wins again until 2016, when a 12-4 season was derailed by an injury to quarterback Derek Carr, which held him out of Oakland’s wild-card loss.
The Jaguars aren’t quite at the bottom of the barrel, but the last 18 years could have been a lot better in Jacksonville. Still, with a new franchise quarterback in Trevor Lawrence and coaching staff led by Urban Meyer, there’s reason to believe the losing seasons will soon be a thing of the past.