NFL History: Ranking the 30 best wild card teams in NFL history

Ranking the 30 best wild card teams in NFL history: 13. ’96 Jacksonville Jaguars

One of the most underrated stories in football was the side-by-side runs of the 1996 Jacksonville Jaguars and Carolina Panthers. It was both their second season since they came into the NFL via expansion. Both teams went all the way to the conference championship, and they were on a collision course to have an all expansion Super Bowl. The Panthers were a division winner, so they don’t qualify for this list.

The Jaguars on the other hand were a Wild Card team. Tom Coughlin found some magic formula and Mark Brunell became a really good quarterback in this offense. There was a lot of luck with roster construction, but the team was also put together really well. Luck cannot come without opportunity, and the Jags front office gave this team the opportunity to be really good.

The Jags started the season 4-7, but they won the last five games of the season to go into the playoffs with a ton of momentum. Every one of those wins came by one score. They were playing by the skin of their teeth, and that didn’t stop once the playoffs started.

The Jaguars faced one of the most daunting tasks by facing the Jim Kelly Bills and John Elway Broncos in back-to-back playoff games. They won both games 30-27. That’s right, they won both games by the same exact score. The great play of this run is Jimmy Smith’s diving touchdown in the endzone to put the Jags up ten in the fourth quarter against the Broncos with three minutes left. It was too great a deficit to overcome. The Jaguars couldn’t overcome the Patriots in the AFC Championship, but this was one of the most fun runs in the history of the league.