Go back to the offseason. Go back to when the schedule was announced and the Jaguars were in the process of cutting half of their roster from the previous year and giving us every indication that 2009 would be little more than a rebuilding year.
Can you remember how you felt back then when the schedule came out and you saw an opening salvo of Peyton Manning, last season’s NFC champion, a trip to Houston where the Jaguars seldom win, and a game against the team with the best record in the AFC last year? So what did you decide would be the Jaguars’ first-month fate? Would you have taken 2-2 and been happy? Absolutely, you would’ve taken 2-2 and been happy.
All right, so be happy.
The Jaguars are 2-2 and their fans are dreaming of 2007 all over again, following a crushing victory over the Tennessee Titans that wasn’t as close as the final score. This one was over before halftime and there was quit written all over the Titans sideline.
So stunning was this victory that coach Jack Del Rio actually had to use his postgame press conference, often a place of angst and cynicism, to caution fans and media against feeling too good.
“We’re a little bit better but we’ve got a long way to go. I don’t want to get carried away,” Del Rio said.
The only bad thing about this win was that it was so complete that it lacked anything about which Jaguars fans might complain. Who they gonna rip this week? David Garrard? Del Rio? No wayo.
Garrard turned in his best performance of the season, throwing for 323 yards, three touchdowns and a passer rating of 126.3. He also rushed for 38 yards. What didn’t he do?
Del Rio and his staff gave Titans coach Jeff Fisher and his staff a thorough pencil-whipping. Offensive Coordinator Dirk Koetter ran the Titans defense sideline to sideline with Mike Thomas, and then torched them over the middle with Mike Sims-Walker, Marcedes Lewis and just about anybody else who wanted to join the Jaguars’ list of pass-catchers, which totaled nine.
What the offensive explosion did was take the Titans out of their running game and put them in a passing mode, and that’s not Titans football.
You want domination? The Jaguars gave it to you. Their 442 yards of offense is the most since 2007 and Garrard’s 323 yards passing is the second-most of his career.
Unfortunately, the thumping the Jaguars put on their rivals from Nashville was witnessed by a mere 46,031 fans, as a second consecutive regular season game was blacked out to local television. Good seats are also available for the next home game, against St. Louis on Oct. 18.
Between now and then, the Jaguars will make the painfully long diagonal trek across the country, to Seattle to face a 1-3 Seahawks team that was spanked hard by the Colts on Sunday.
So what does this two-game winning streak mean? That’s the question on every Jaguars fan’s lips. Is this team for real or just a tease?
“That doesn’t matter. Our expectation is for getting ready for Seattle. We can write our own story. We’re not going to get into what the future holds,” Garrard said.
“I think the sky is the limit. We can’t go out there and lay an egg,” Maurice Jones-Drew said.
The Titans are the ones that laid the egg. Did you expect that to happen?