JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) — Josh Allen remembers the moment he heard the Jacksonville Jaguars would be playing on “Monday Night Football.”
He was working out in Arizona in May and picked up his phone to scroll through highlights of the 2023 schedule.
“I screamed,” the pass rusher recalled Thursday.
Every team in the league has played on “Monday Night Football” at least seven times since Jacksonville’s 38-14 home loss to Philip Rivers and the then-San Diego Chargers on Dec. 5, 2011. Six teams — Chicago, New Orleans, the New York Giants, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Seattle — have each played more than 20 times on “MNF” since.
The Jaguars, meanwhile, kept getting overlooked — even after making the AFC title game in the 2017 season. Their market played a role. So did the team’s lack of success; Jacksonville finished with double-digit losses 10 times in 11 seasons between 2011 and 2021. “We just got to keep winning,” Allen said. “If we keep winning and then they see us in the Super Bowl, I really could care less about how people feel or how they see us. That’s really how we rock. We win games, and you don’t hear about us.”
The Jaguars are making noise. They’ve won seven of their past eight this season and 14 of 18 going back to last season. And they hope to keep it going against the Bengals, who have lost three in a row and will be without star quarterback Joe Burrow following season-ending wrist surgery.
“It’s obviously exciting,” Jaguars coach Doug Pederson said. “It’s always an electric moment. We’ll have conversations this week. It’s really just approaching it the same, learning to control your emotions. I want the guys to feel relaxed, but at the same time, continue to have that edge that we’ve had the last couple of weeks.
