I came up with 7 real enough reasons to watch Jaguars vs. Titans on ‘Thursday Night Football,’ so now you totally should

Four years ago, the Titans and Jaguars played on Thursday night in what was famously declared the poop emoji game. The AFC South rivals entered Week 16 with just two wins apiece. The Titans finished the season with the same number of wins.

No game epitomized, in the immortal words of Richard Sherman, the “poopfest” reputation of Thursday Night Football more.

But in 2018, things are different.

Thursday Night Football was once the Suddenly Susan/Veronica’s Closet/Union Square of the NFL week — the drivel NBC would sneak in between Friends and Seinfeld or between Seinfeld and ER during its “Must See TV” heyday, hoping we’d watch out of laziness. This year, the duds on TNF have, thankfully, been few and far between. Even last week’s low-scoring Saints-Cowboys was entertaining in its own chaotic way.

The Titans and Jaguars have come a long way in those four years, too. Both teams not only made the playoffs last season, but they got their first postseason wins since the aughts — one for Tennessee and two for Jacksonville. Then the Patriots, as they so often do to the rest of the AFC, snapped their Thanos-like fingers as both teams’ Super Bowl hopes faded into the ether.

This season hasn’t been as promising for either team. They’re not where they were in 2014 at their scatological worst, but at the same time, this game isn’t going to register on the Rams-Chiefs fun scale. That’s OK. In fact, let’s welcome it, like a trip down memory lane — even if it happens to be nostalgia for laughably bad Thursday Night Football.

Here are seven mostly real reasons the penultimate Thursday game of the season is worth watching.

This year is on pace to be the NFL’s highest-scoring season ever. Through the first 13 weeks of the season, teams are averaging 23.9 points per game. If that holds, it’ll be a record. So far, 1,055 touchdowns have been scored around the league.

So how the hell have the Jaguars played TWO all-field goal games, in 2018 of all years?!

I’m not excusing it, but two factors are:

Last week, Jacksonville ended its seven-game slide with a 6-0 win over a Colts team that had been rolling. It was Cody Kessler’s first start since taking over for the benched Blake Bortles, and the win improved his record as a starting quarterback to 1-8 — Kessler did, after all, spend the first two years of his career in an even more hopeless place, with Hue Jackson’s Browns. Kessler didn’t have to do much in his first win, passing for just 150 yards. But he also didn’t make throws like this:

So really, that’s progress.

The other time the Jaguars played in a touchdown-less game this season was their first matchup against the Titans in Week 3. An injured Marcus Mariota came off the bench when his backup, Duval legend Blaine Gabbert, suffered a concussion. Mariota then led the Titans to three field goal drives and the 9-6 win.

That’s probably not a good omen for the Jags’ chances of finding the end zone this week. Neither is the advanced stats breakdown that shows just how comatose their offense is — and how the Tennessee defense is built to keep to stop explosive offenses anyway.

They at least get Leonard Fournette back after he served a one-game suspension for his part in the Great Jags-Bills Fight of 2018. So at least one player on their offense should have a little fire — and maybe this time it won’t get him ejected.

You either love Jalen Ramsey or you hate him, but you can’t deny the guy can talk mad shit.

Two weeks ago, he pointed at the Bills’ sideline to call different players “trash.” Last week, he “down low, too slow”-ed Andrew Luck, who might be the most genial quarterback in the league (I can’t base this on personal knowledge, just on every dorky thing I’ve read about Luck).

But if there IS a nicer quarterback than Luck, it’s probably Mariota. So I have to assume Ramsey has something up his sleeve to needle him. Will he give him bunny ears? Do the Mutombo finger wag? Throw a shoe?

It’s all in good fun. Ramsey respects players he feels have earned it. And if they haven’t, he’ll let you know.

The Titans are the most consistently inconsistently team in the NFL. Or maybe they’re the most inconsistently consistent? I don’t know which, just like I don’t know what the Titans are. One week they can hold the Patriots to 10 points in a four-score win, and the next week they only muster 10 points in a 38-10 loss to the Colts (though that might’ve been the hex the Patriots put on any team that beats them).

You never know if the Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde version of the Titans is going to show up. Part of that is because Mariota is a bit of an enigma, but the entire team is all over the place:

It should come as no surprise that the Titans have won three in a row, then lost three in row, then won two in a row, then lost two in a row. Bookending their 6-6 season so far? A loss in their first game and win in their last.

But really: WHO ARE YOU?

For the first two seasons of The Good Place, the Jaguars were just a running joke, something the simple-minded, mostly sweet, extremely Florida character Jason Mendoza would reference. It’s taken a turn in its current season, now that we’ve seen an eerie connection between what happens on the show and what happens to the Jaguars.

So here’s an experiment: Put The Good Place on TV. Watch it live, like we used to in those Must-See TV days. At the same time, stream the game and see what transpires. Will Jason call the Jaguars the greatest sports franchise that has ever existed, and then something like this immediately happens after on the field:

Or will Jason have a moment of moral clarity and then something like this happens:

We’re about to find out just how deep this goes.

When you think of NFL rivalries, the first to come to mind are probably Saints-Falcons or Cowboys-Eagles or NFC North vs. everybody but the Lions. The Titans and Jaguars don’t immediately jump out as mortal enemies and yet, the hate is very real — especially for Jags fans:

To Jaguars fans, Titans fans are folks who eat mayonnaise right out of the jars. To Titans fans, Jaguars fans are ... well, probably Jason Mendoza.

Sometimes, that animosity bleeds over to the players. Last time these teams played in Nashville, there was some scrapping after the game. That was also the first time since 2008 that one team (in this case, the Tennessee) had swept the season series. Now, it’s been more than 700 days since the Jaguars have beaten the Titans.

This rivalry gave us the most perfect Jaguars reaction GIF — nay, the most perfect reaction GIF, period:

Should we expect another masterpiece like that? Well no, there’s only one Mona Lisa. But I strongly believe in the camera crew’s instinct and ability to capture our next favorite meme.

A win for the Titans keeps gives them an outside chance at the division crown, but more than anything, it helps their wild card chances. Entering Week 14, Tennessee is just a game back of the No. 6 seed in the AFC.

A loss for the Titans, coupled with a Texans win over the Colts on Sunday, would give the AFC South title back to Houston for the fourth time in five years.

The Jaguars are 4-8 and basically have no shot at repeat trip to the playoffs, but a win would at least keep the dream alive for one more week. On the other hand, a loss would eliminate both the Jaguars and the Jets, because the Titans are cold to J teams like that:

A loss would also help the Jaguars get just a little bit closer to having their pick of Dwayne Haskins or Justin Herbert in the 2019 NFL Draft.