Some people are fans of the Jacksonville Jaguars. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Jacksonville Jaguars. This 2012 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read the other Why Your Team Sucks 2012 previews here.


1. YOOOOOOOOOOO GABBERT GABBERT!!!! One of the great running jokes of this preseason is just how awful Blaine Gabbert has looked in training camp. Poor Jags beat writer Vito Stellino has been on hand all summer to watch Gabbert go one-for-12 playing against air. Stellino has taken great care to phrase Gabbert's abysmal play and the team's outright putridity as delicately as possible. He's a professional, after all.

Vito Stellino ‏@vitostellino Another small crowd at practice . Jags fans don't seem to be all in.

The fact that Stellino knows he needs to sugarcoat the apathy only makes it more glaring. No word on if Gabbert has yet to perfect closing his eyes while throwing the ball, but I think after watching him play during his rookie season, we all know he's on his way. But don't worry, Jags fan. By Week 3, you'll have CHAD HENNE as your starting QB! That's right, Chad Henne: The Quarterback You Use When You Have No Quarterbacks. Would you like me to kill you now? I think you would. Don't worry, I'll make sure it's painless. Breathe easy.


2. Mike Mularkey is the Chan Gailey of Mike Mularkeys. It's hard to overstate how deflating it is to see your team hire a thoroughly useless retread like Mike Mularkey. Hiring a brand new coach is the ONE TIME a beaten down NFL fan gets to feel optimistic about the future. An unknown assistant or famous college coach may not guarantee success, but at least there's the PROMISE of something good. At least you can daydream that your team happened upon its own Mike Tomlin. But you don't even get to enjoy that momentary self-delusion when your team goes out and hires Mike fucking Mularkey. There's no upside to that. There's no hope to be wrung from such a rote, passionless hire. You may as well hire no one. You may as well gain 500 lbs. and delete your eHarmony profile because you clearly don't give a shit anymore.

Nothing about this hire makes sense. This is a team that has a new owner (Shahid "The Iron Hedgehog" Khan) and a rapidly dissolving fanbase. They could have hired Wolfman Rob Ryan! At least when you go 3-13 five years straight with Rob Ryan, you do it in style. There would be random stains ALL OVER the locker room if you had Rob Ryan as coach. This team needed to do something... ANYTHING... to prevent themselves from being an NFL nonentity. Ninety percent of all discussions involving the Jaguars feature at least one person asking, "Christ, why haven't they moved to L.A. already?" The team is stuck in Florida's asshole for the next two decades for no good reason. An optimized NFL is one in which the Jaguars are banished from the face of the fucking Earth.

3. Let's make fun of the receivers. There are three new wideouts in Jacksonville. The first is Justin Blackmon, who can get fantastic separation when he's driving 150 mph after chugging a gallon of paint thinner. Then there's Laurent Robinson, who is now free to go back to being Laurent Robinson after the Jags overpaid him for one nice season in Dallas. And then we have... LEE EVANS?! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Holy shit, Lee Evans is awful. I wouldn't trust Lee Evans to hold a sleeping baby. Lee Evans is the Mike Mularkey of journeyman wideouts.

Drew Magary writes for Deadspin and Gawker. He's also a correspondent for GQ. Follow him on Twitter @drewmagary and email him at drew@deadspin.com.


4. Remember how everyone thought the wheels would fall off MJD last season? Turns out we were just one season too early. If and when his holdout ever ends, Pocket Hercules will be summarily run into the ground by Mularkey. I don't wanna see that happen. It would break my heart. I'd much prefer it if he held out forever and was far away from Jacksonville when the rising ocean tides come to claim the city for good, flooding all the buildings and Fred Durst's recording studio and dragging it all back out to sea. The town will settle at the bottom of the ocean and future anthropologists will discover it while scouring the ocean floor in a submersible. They'll come across the bones of 500-lb. Jacksonville citizens and name the wreckage FATLANTIS.

5. Hear it from an ex-Jags fan! I asked Dan Shanoff to contribute to this preview. This was his response:

Why do you ask? Oh wow, because of my thing about being a Jaguars fan from six years ago? That expired the night of the '10 draft when Tebow went to the Broncos. Your revised question: "Anything Jets-related you'd like to toss into the Deadspin preview?"


That is such a Shanoff move. Here's reader CME:

This was our QB's most impressive play last year...

Wanna be part of the Deadspin NFL previews? It's simple. Just email me and give me ample evidence of why your team sucks. I'll throw any good material into the post and give you proper credit. Next team up: THE TEXANS.