The National Football League season is finally upon us again, and with its return, fans anticipate the thrill of watching the one team that wins when no one expects them to. This season, I will be picking one team per week that I believe will most likely surprise the league.
For week one, I am going big: I predict the four-point underdog Jacksonville Jaguars will beat the Kansas City Chiefs.
Two seasons ago, the Jaguars were one win away from the Super Bowl thanks to stellar playoff performances from Blake Bortles, Leonard Fournette and the defense led by Jalen Ramsey.
Last season, the defense remained strong, but the offense was an absolute disaster. The team averaged just 15.3 points a game, primarily due to Fournette’s injuries and Blake Bortles’ simply forgetting how to play football. This year, Fournette is in the best shape of his life and the Jaguars got a massive upgrade at the quarterback position in former Super Bowl MVP Nick Foles.
Foles is by no means a pro-bowler, but compared to Bortles, he looks like Aaron Rodgers. The Jaguars are coming into the game on a mission, ready to prove that last year was just a fluke.
The Chiefs, however, took a major hit last season when star running back Kareem Hunt was released from the team for domestic abuse. The Chiefs’ offense was simply not the same without Hunt. They are still a playoff-caliber team, but they are not the dominant force they used to be.
The Chiefs quarterback 2018 MVP Patrick Mahomes will work his magic and have a great game, but the Jaguars, one of the top secondaries in the NFL, will stop him from putting up the insane numbers we saw last year. Meanwhile, the Jaguars’ revamped offense will put up big numbers against the almost non-existent Chiefs secondary. Look for the Jaguars to win 38-31.
