The history of the Jacksonville Jaguars, an American football team in the National Football League (NFL), formally dates to November 30, 1993, when the NFL awarded Jacksonville, Florida the expansion franchise that became the Jacksonville Jaguars.Pierson, Don. "Surprise! It's Jacksonville in NFL landslide". Chicago Tribune, December 1, 1993. Retrieved on January 13, 2015. The Jaguars, along with the Carolina Panthers, started play in the 1995 NFL season as expansion teams.
Forerunners Attempts to bring professional football to Jacksonville dated as early as 1925; eventual Hall of Famer Ernie Nevers played his professional rookie season with a team in Jacksonville that year, before the team folded, unable to afford Nevers's salary. By the 1970s, leagues other than the NFL had begun placing franchises in the city; the Jacksonville Sharks and Jacksonville Express played in the World Football League, the Jacksonville Firebirds played in the American Football Association and the Jacksonville Bulls played in the United States Football League. In 1987, Jacksonville made an unsuccessful pitch to Bud Adams to relocate the Houston Oilers to Jacksonville; Adams ultimately received the stadium renovations for the Astrodome that he sought and kept the team in Houston roughly a decade longer before moving the team to Tennessee.
Welcome to the NFL: 1991–1994
In 1989, the prospective ownership group Touchdown Jacksonville! was organized. The group initially included future Florida Governor Jeb Bush and Jacksonville developer Tom Petway, and came to be led by shoe magnate Wayne Weaver, founder of Nine West. In 1991, the NFL announced plans to add two expansion teams in 1994 (later delayed until 1995), its first expansion since the 1976 addition of the Seattle Seahawks and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Touchdown Jacksonville! announced its bid for a team, and Jacksonville was ultimately chosen as one of five finalists, along with Charlotte, St. Louis, Baltimore, and Memphis.
Jacksonville was considered the least likely expansion candidate for several reasons. The Jacksonville metropolitan area and television market were smaller than those of nearly every team in the league. Jacksonville was the 54th largest television market, and only Green Bay had a smaller TV market (Jacksonville has since moved up to 42nd, trailed by New Orleans, Buffalo and Green Bay.) Although Jacksonville was the 15th largest city in the nation at the time by city proper population (It has since grown to become the 12th-largest), it has always been a medium-sized market because, as a consolidated city-county with Duval County, the city bounds already encompass most of the metropolitan area. There were 635,000 people in Jacksonville proper according to the 1990 census, but only 900,000 people in the metropolitan area. Additionally, the Gator Bowl was outdated, and the ownership group struggled to negotiate a lease with the city. The troubled negotiations over the Gator Bowl lease led the ownership group to withdraw from the NFL expansion bidding in July 1993.
Charlotte was awarded the first franchise – the Carolina Panthers – in October 1993. Surprisingly, the naming of the second expansion city was delayed a month. Most pundits speculated that the delay was made to allow St. Louis to shore up its bid. At the time, St. Louis was considered the favorite for the second franchise, with Baltimore's three bids also considered strong. However, in a surprising move, the NFL owners voted 26–2 in favor of awarding the 30th franchise to Jacksonville.
After the Gator Bowl game on December 31, 1993, the old stadium was essentially demolished and replaced with a reinforced concrete superstructure. All that remained of the old stadium was the west upper concourse and a portion of the ramping system. To accommodate construction, the 1994 and 1995 games of "The World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party" were split between the home fields of Florida and Georgia, and the 1994 Gator Bowl was played at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium in Gainesville.Dame, Mike. "Gator Bowl moves to Gainesville for one year", South Florida Sun-Sentinel. January 28, 1994. Page C4.
The Jaguars were put in the AFC Central to increase the size of that division to five (later six) teams; similar to their in-state NFC counterparts, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, their division was geographically inaccurate as the majority of their divisional rivals were located in the midwest region.
Tom Coughlin and Mark Brunell era: 1994–2002
In January 1994, Wayne Weaver chose Tom Coughlin as the first-ever head coach of the Jaguars. Coughlin had worked in the NFL as a position coach, but he had been neither a head coach nor a coordinator in the NFL.
The Jaguars' hiring of Coughlin contrasted with the hiring moves made by their fellow expansion team. The same month that Weaver hired Coughlin as his head coach, Carolina Panthers owner Jerry Richardson went a more conventional route and hired former Buffalo Bills general manager Bill Polian as the Panthers' first GM (the Panthers' head coach, Dom Capers, would not be hired until a full year after Coughlin). As it emerged that Weaver had no intention of hiring a general manager, it became apparent that Coughlin would have most of the authority regarding hiring decisions. Coughlin spent his year as "head coach without a team" preparing for the personnel moves that would come from the expansion draft, free agency, and the rookie draft in the spring of 1995.
1995
Along with the Carolina Panthers, the Jacksonville Jaguars entered the NFL as the first expansion teams in almost twenty years. Both teams participated in the 1995 NFL expansion draft, with the Jaguars taking Steve Beuerlein with the first pick. Beuerlein quickly lost his starting job to former Green Bay Packers backup Mark Brunell. The Jaguars finished their inaugural season with a record of 4–12. While this fell short of the 7–9 mark recorded by the Panthers, other than this and the 1960 records of the charter American Football League teams the Jaguars' record was still the best recorded in an inaugural season by any NFL team which commenced play after 1950. The inaugural season featured many of the players who would lead Jacksonville into the playoffs in the team's next four seasons, including quarterback Mark Brunell (acquired in a draft day trade from Green Bay), offensive lineman Tony Boselli (drafted with the second pick overall in the 1995 NFL draft) running back James Stewart (also drafted in 1995), and wide receiver Jimmy Smith (signed as a free agent).
The team played its first regular season game at home in front of a crowd of 72,363 on September 3, a 10–3 loss against the Houston Oilers. The team picked up its first win in Week 4 as the Jaguars defeated the Oilers 17–16 on October 1 in Houston. The next week against the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Jaguars earned their first home win by defeating the eventual AFC Champions 20–16. The team's other two wins came in a season sweep of the Cleveland Browns including a Week 17 24–21 victory sealed by a Mike Hollis 34-yard field goal in the Browns' final game before the team relocated to Baltimore and was renamed the Ravens.
1996
Jacksonville's 1996 season was a marked success as they won six of their last seven games of the season and finished with a record of 9–7. Quarterback Mark Brunell threw for over 4,000 yards and wide receivers Keenan McCardell and Jimmy Smith each accumulated over 1,000 receiving yards. In the team's final game of the regular season against the Atlanta Falcons, needing a win to earn a playoff berth, the Jaguars caught a bit of luck when Morten Andersen, one of the most accomplished kickers in NFL history, missed a 30-yard field goal with less than a minute remaining that would have given the Falcons the lead. The Jaguars clinched the fifth seed in the AFC playoffs.
The Jaguars visited the Buffalo Bills in their first playoff game in franchise history. Despite being a heavy underdog, the Jaguars won 30–27, and knocked Buffalo quarterback Jim Kelly out of what would turn out to be the last game of his career. Their next game was on the road against the Denver Broncos, who had earned the AFC's top seed with a 13–3 record and were widely regarded as the best team in the AFC, if not the NFL. While the Broncos scored two touchdowns early in the game, after the first quarter, the Jaguars largely dominated. In what is often regarded as one of the three biggest upsets in NFL playoff history, the Jaguars defeated the Broncos by the same score as the previous week against the Bills, 30–27. Upon their return home, the Jags were greeted by an estimated 40,000 fans at the stadium. Many of these fans had watched the game on the stadium JumboTron displays and had stayed into the early hours of the morning when the team arrived. In the AFC Championship Game, the Jaguars miracle season came to an end, as they lost 20–6 to the New England Patriots, in Foxboro. Their fellow second-year NFC expansion team, the Carolina Panthers, also got to their conference championship game, where they lost 30–13 to the eventual Super Bowl champion Green Bay Packers.
1997–1999
In 1997, the franchise's third season, the Jaguars and the Steelers both finished the season with an 11–5 record, tops in the AFC Central Division. Pittsburgh won the division in a tiebreaker as a result of having higher net in division games than Jacksonville.1997 NFL season As a result, the Jaguars settled for 2nd place in the division, a Wild Card berth and, for the second straight year, the 5th seed in the AFC playoffs. The Jags postseason would end quickly as they fell in their first game, a 42–17 defeat against the eventual Super Bowl champion Denver Broncos at Mile High Stadium. The Broncos, led by Terrell Davis, ran at will against the Jaguars, rushing for 5 touchdowns and over 300 yards.Team profile, pro-football-reference.com; accessed November 30, 2014.
In 1998, the Jaguars again finished 11–5 and won their first AFC Central Division title. The team became the first NFL expansion team to make the playoffs three times in its first four seasons of play. In the Wild Card Round, the Jaguars hosted their first home playoff game, a 25–10 win over the New England Patriots. The team's season ended the next week in the Divisional Round as the New York Jets defeated the Jaguars 34–24.
In 1999, the Jaguars compiled a league best 14–2 regular season record, the best record in franchise history. The team's two losses were to the Tennessee Titans. The Jaguars won the AFC Central Division for the second straight year and clinched the #1 seed in the AFC. The Jaguars hosted the Miami Dolphins in the AFC Divisional playoffs, a 62–7 victory in what would be Dan Marino and Jimmy Johnson's last NFL game. Jacksonville's 62 points and 55-point margin are the second most ever in NFL playoff history, and Fred Taylor's 90-yard run in the first quarter is the longest ever in an NFL playoff game.Fred Taylor historic 90 yard run, sportsillustrated.cnn.com, January 15, 2000; accessed November 30, 2014.
The Jaguars' bid for a Super Bowl title came to an end the next week in the AFC championship game. The Jags fell at home to the Titans 33–14 in a game that the Jaguars led 14–10 at halftime, before allowing 23 unanswered points in the 2nd half. The Jaguars finished the 1999 season 15–3, with all three of their losses coming against the Titans. The loss marked the end of an era that saw the Jaguars make the playoffs in four of the team's first 5 years and would be the team's last playoff appearance until the 2005 season.
2000–2002
The Jaguars struggled during this period, due in part to salary cap problems. In the 2000 season, veteran quarterback Mark Brunell and young running back Fred Taylor led the squad through a painful 7–9 season. The Jaguars finished with records of 6–10 in both the 2001 and 2002 seasons.