The 1996 Jacksonville Jaguars: The Bold New Team of the South

One advantage for Jacksonville though, was that over the last three weeks of the regular season, the Jaguars' running game had gotten better. The big offensive line began to jell and running back Natrone Means began to run like he did when he led the Chargers to Super Bowl XXIX.

This would prove faithful, as the Jaguars became the first visiting team to win a playoff game in Buffalo. Natrone Means carried the Jaguars on his back with 175 yards on the ground, and kicker Mike Hollis provided the winning margin with a field goal with around three minutes left on the clock.

Jacksonville went ballistic. Five-thousand people flooded Jacksonville International Airport to welcome the Jaguars home. There were so many people at the airport that the local news had to break into programming to tell people to stay at home and not to come to the airport unless you had a flight to catch.

The people of Jacksonville believed in the Big Cats. It was a measure of pride for the people of Jacksonville to have a winning NFL team in their city. For too long, Jacksonville had an inferiority complex about it. The city was used by other NFL franchises (Baltimore Colts, St. Louis Cardinals) to get better relocation deals in other cities.

Much like the Buffalo game, no one outside of Jacksonville gave the Jaguars a chance the next week, when they were matched up with the Denver Broncos. The Broncos had finally put together all of the pieces they lacked in previous Super Bowl runs, and were thought to end the Cinderella run the Jaguars had put together.

Then, to make matters worse, Denver Post columnist Woody Paige further intensified things in his game day column with these words of wisdom, among others:

‘How do you get worked up to play somebody called Jacksonville with a bunch of nobodies?’

‘Jacksonville? Is that a semi-pro team or a theme park? Isn't Jacksonville the only Florida city without a beach?’

‘Who do these upstart Jaguars think they are, anyway, coming to Mile High Stadium, where the Broncos haven't lost this season and only once ever in the playoffs? They must think they belong here, but they will learn.’

And he ended his rant with this one:

Can we get a legitimate NFL team in here next Sunday?

Well, it turned out for Denver that they wouldn’t get any NFL team in there the following Sunday, because Jacksonville went into Denver and came away with a 30-27 win. A second playoff win in as many tries.

Jacksonville was one game away from the Super Bowl, and the fans wanted to celebrate. 40,000 fans to be exact. At 1:30 in the morning. At the stadium. The team had its charter plane fly over the stadium so the players could see the fans filling up half of Alltel Stadium, and the team was brought back to the stadium directly from the airport.

Jacksonville was at a fever pitch for the AFC Championship game. The city was fully behind the Jaguars, and it showed. Everywhere you went, there was teal. The city and team combined to do a smart thing, and they opened Alltel Stadium so that fans could watch the game from the inside the stadium.

The Jaguars put up a valiant effort that day, but it just wasn’t meant to be. They trailed the entire day in a hard fought football game. New England pulled away late on an Otis Smith fumble return for a touchdown, and they went to the Super Bowl.

Undeterred by the outcome, the 1996 Jacksonville Jaguars team put themselves on the NFL map. They served as the detonation point for a solid, if not spectacular run through the rest of the decade.

The Jaguars were finally Jacksonville’s team.  

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