Are you old enough to remember when the Jacksonville Jaguars were one of the Pittsburgh Steelers’ biggest divisional rivals? It might be hard to imagine after two decades, but the two teams spent the better part of the ‘90s duking it out in the now-defunct AFC Central.
And even though the divisional realignment in 2002 that created the AFC North pushed the Jaguars to the South, that rivalry remained for some years. According to one defender who participated in some of that rivalry, he also sees it on the comeback.
“It was the Pittsburgh Steelers of the South,” CB Ike Taylor said last week about the Jaguars with Randy Baumann on the DVE Morning Show. “We already knew it was gonna be a dogfight. At one point in time, we looked at Jacksonville like how we’re looking at the Baltimore Ravens. ‘Oh yeah, it’s about to be a game right here’. A lot of people are gonna be having headaches and we’re gonna be in the ice tub for hours, or weeks after this game”.
An expansion team in 1995, the Jaguars were surprisingly successful early on under head coach Tom Coughlin. They posted a losing record initially but made the playoffs each of the next four years. But things went south for a period of time after they knocked the Steelers out of the playoffs in 2007, head coach Mike Tomlin’s first season. They didn’t make it back for a decade.
There were plenty of hard-fought games, however, both before and after, and even in between. The Jaguars actually have a winning record over the Steelers, 14-13, though that includes a 2-0 postseason record against them. There were some blowouts Pittsburgh got along the way, but they were often similar teams built on defense and a run game with Fred Taylor and Maurice Jones-Drew.
“That’s just what it was, and it looks like Jacksonville’s getting back to that, that old, aggressive Jacksonville of the South from when I played”, Taylor said of this 5-2 Jaguars team the Steelers are about to face. “They got a running game, they got some receivers in Calvin, they got a tight end in Engram, they got a defense that all they want to do is smack your head hard. They got a quarterback who’s a real live future franchise quarterback”.
Their current running back is Travis Etienne, who leads the league in rushes this year and has seven rushing touchdowns. QB Trevor Lawrence continues to grow into the franchise player they selected him to be. And they have weapons at wide receiver in Christian Kirk, Calvin Ridley, and Zay Jones, though the latter won’t play. TE Evan Engram is also a concern.
While the defense might not always rank favorably in every category, they have been the most opportunistic unit in the league with 16 takeaways, including nine interceptions. Josh Allen is a force as a pass rusher, and you would be fooling yourself if you judged the quality of their secondary purely by the team’s overall pass defense numbers. If a spark were needed to reignite this rivalry, we could see it today.
