NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Jacksonville Jaguars nose tackle Marcell Dareus is excited to be facing the team that traded him away when the Buffalo Bills play at EverBank Field on Sunday in the first round of the playoffs.
But he’d rather be playing the Tennessee Titans again.
Yes, he wanted to play same Titans team that just beat the Jaguars 15-10 a week ago at Nissan Stadium. Dareus wasn’t impressed with the team that beat the Jaguars twice in regular season to help earn the franchise’s first playoff spot since 2008.
"I would love to play their sorry ass again,” Dareus said shortly after the game ended. “They shouldn’t have showed me that. They shouldn’t have showed me how sorry their ass is. That’s embarrassing that they would call themselves any kind of an enforcer of a team. Oh my God.
"When we suit up next year, they better be ready because they already know what kind of ass-whooping I’ll hand out to them. ... Dang, I wish we could have played them next week. That would have been an easy win next week, oh my goodness, but we’ve got Buffalo.”
The Jaguars' defense held Tennessee to 232 yards, including just 116 yards passing. They gave up most of that on one big play, Derrick Henry’s 66-yard screen pass. Other than that, though, the Titans had only one other play gain more than 13 yards -- a 15-yard scramble by Marcus Mariota.
The defense scored the Jaguars’ only touchdown when defensive end Yannick Ngakoue returned Mariota’s fumble 67 yards early in the fourth quarter.
The Jaguars’ offense, however, managed just three points, turned the ball over four times (two interceptions), and totaled just 229 yards to snap their streak of consecutive games with 400-plus yards of offense at four.
Still, Dareus admitted that it’s pretty special playing the Bills on Sunday. Buffalo drafted him third overall in 2011 and he spent the first 6½ seasons of his career there -- where he made the Pro Bowl in 2014 and 2015 -- before being traded to the Jaguars on Oct. 28.
Dareus, who recorded his second sack of the season against the Titans, said he obviously has plenty of friends on the Bills and he’s glad they made the playoffs for the first time in 17 years. He finds it interesting that the Jaguars snapped a long playoff drought as well (2007 was the last time) and that they’re meeting on Sunday.
“I’m just extremely happy for [defensive tackle] Kyle Williams, extremely happy for [center] Eric Wood. The lifers that’ve been there and fought for all those years -- at least seven when I was there,” Dareus said. “Just extremely happy for those guys. For me to still say, ‘Hey, I made it with them. Hey, we all got our first Pro Bowl, we all got our first playoff together,’ and then we get to see y’all the first round, you can’t make this s--- up.
“How ironic is that?”