I was watching the Doug Pederson Show on Youtube and Chris Manhertz was on the show.

Lageman asked him about the challenges the expected lackluster environment they expect from the Houston crowd because of how poor their season has been, and how fans are already looking forward to the draft, etc.  Not that it was that long ago, but I remember being in crowds of that nature, and I shook my head in dismay.

But what was really sad was Manhertz' response.  He described the environment in the Dallas game as a "hostile environment" that helped prepare the team for criwd challenges to come.  We were the home team....in our stadium...yet the crowd was deemed "hostile" by a Jaguars player. 

Were he lauding the home crowd for being raucous...for helping the team get false starts, etc, that would be one thing. But within the context of his response, it was a negative factor for the Jaguars. 

Part of that is to be expected.  Dallas is perhaps the team with the biggest national following-at least in the top 3-4.  Conversely, the Jaguars are still trying to carve out a niche among football fans.  That is exacerbated by the decade plus of losing this team has done.  This is far from the only time this has been the case.  The Steelers, Giants, Cowboys and the 49ers have created that atmosphere  in our stadium.

I'm glad we now have Pederson and Trevor Lawrence as leading Jaguars figures.  It took a while to get things going this year, but they seem to be in the process ot turning things around for the better.  Lots of negative streaks/trends have turned around.  We couldn't win on the West coast, but we beat the Chargers this year.  We couldn;t beat any NFC teams for 20 straight games until we beat Dallas.  We couldn't beat Tennessee on the road since 2013 (?) until we beat them this year.  We still have a few streaks left to break jn the two regular season games left.  We haven't beate the Texans in the last nine games, dating back to 2018,  We haven't swept the tacks since 2005 (the "Fisher sucks chant game."  We haven;t w't won the division since 2017.

It's my deepest hope that if we can accomplish this, continue to strengthen our team and our hold on the division, we'll win the trust and admiration of the fans in here, such that opposing fan takeovers of our stadiums never happen again.

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