The Jaguars’ season has ended, but there are still 3 games of football left. With any luck, these are going to be 3 excellent games that display the talent and execution that brought each team to their conference championships.
If you’re anything like me, you’ve gotten used to being able to pick the team you’ll cheer for in the playoffs by Week 13 or 14. This year, thanks to a clutch stretch of football, none of us have been thinking about another team to cheer for this playoff season. It’s always been the Jags.
That being said, anyone without a personal connection to one of the four remaining teams is probably scrambling to choose who they should cheer for to take home the Lombardi in February. Here’s one reason to cheer for each remaining team:
Kansas City Chiefs: A loss to the Eventual Champions
I will not shy away from saying that trying to find a reason to cheer for the Chiefs after they eliminated us feels like a crime. Nonetheless, it would certainly feel better to claim it took the best team in the NFL to take us down. The Chiefs 7-point victory over our Jags was far from a sure thing. Having played the eventual champions so close would be a small moral victory to carry through the offseason.
Cincinnati Bengals: A Story We Can Buy Into
A team starved for a winning product. A grumbling fanbase. A team so bad that it got the opportunity to select a generational QB. Jaguars and Bengals fans alike will immediately relate to that narrative.
This year’s Jaguars displayed some remarkable similarities to last year’s Bengals, although our season was cut a few weeks shorter. After an electric run last year, Joe Burrow is hoping to lead the Bengals back to the big game and to their first Super Bowl win in franchise history. It feels right to cheer for the only team - and fanbase - who have been through similar pain in recent history.
San Francisco 49ers: An Improbable Underdog Story
The NFL scriptwriters got deep into their bag to pull out the story of Brock Purdy’s season. After being selected with the final pick of the 2022 NFL Draft, Purdy found himself behind supposed phenom Trey Lance and established game manager Jimmy Garoppolo.
Injuries to both quarterbacks thrust Purdy into the game action against the Dolphins in Week 13. All he has done since then is go 7-0 as a starter while leading a 49ers potent attack with 18 total TDs. We will almost certainly never see a story like this again, and it’s fair to question how much we will see if Purdy when Lance returns healthy next season. For now though, it’s hard to pull against the once-in-a-lifetime underdog quarterback.
Philadelphia Eagles: They’re Doug Pederson’s Old Team
It would be impossible to forget what Doug Pederson did for the Philadelphia Eagles in 2017. After MVP front-runner Carson Wentz (how weird is that to say now?) was lost for the season to an ACL injury, Pederson navigated the playoffs with Nick Foles.
Doug took Foles and the Eagles to the highest level, knocking off the Patriots 41-33 in one of the best offensive football games we’ve seen. It was an added bonus that Patriots was the benefactor of the “Myles Jack wasn’t down” atrocity. Doug surely has many supporters and fans in Philly, and his ties to that team are as good of a reason as any to pull for them to lift the Lombardi trophy again this year.
There’s plenty of great reasons to cheer any of the remaining teams, and I wouldn’t blame you for picking any one of them. These teams will face off in their respective conference championship games this weekend to make the final step towards the Super Bowl.
The NFC Championship between the 49ers and Eagles will be played at 3:00pm EST Sunday on Fox, and will be followed by the AFC Championship between the Bengals and Chiefs at 9:00pm EST on CBS.
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