As other sports see competitive balance ruined by money grabs, the NFL's formula continues to throw up new challengers

The rise of the LA Rams and the Jacksonville Jaguars is another example of the league's competitive parity paying off

The Los Angeles Rams' rise to the top of the NFC West is a sign of a healthy league (Getty)

Shutouts don’t happen often in the NFL but last weekend we had three.

One of those was in Los Angeles, where the Chargers picked up a third win in a row against the offensively-impotent Denver Broncos.

But this isn’t about them. Not yet, at least.

This is about the teams involved in the other two, who won 33-0 and 27-0 to stay tied for the top of their respective decisions.

Those teams are the Los Angeles Rams and the Jacksonville Jaguars and their rises are more than just fresh names in the playoff mix for NFL fans, they are a sign that the league is in fine health and continuing to function precisely how it should.

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In an epic piece of sportswriting, Jonathan Liew described how attending the Rams’ win at Twickenham on Sunday had changed his view of the NFL. Much of what appeals to him throughout the piece is the hyper-specialisation and how that brings the elite at every position. It is a thrilling account of a one-sided match-up that meanders through the sport itself and what makes it great, but it rarely strays from the field.

And when it comes to the NFL – and other American sports – the way that the league is run is entirely impossible to divorce from its success.

While Major League Soccer will likely one day shift to a multi-tiered, ‘pro-rel’ model because of the global footballing context it lives in, the NFL is a closed shop of 32 franchises with no direct competition. It is a corporate behemoth with $12bn annual revenues in the most hyper-capitalist country on the planet but the league’s attitude to ensuring competitive parity is almost communist in its nature, designed to boost the poor and clip the wings of its elite.

Super Bowl 50, played in 2016 between the Carolina Panthers and the Denver Broncos, is a brilliant – and recent - example of that process working. Those two teams were five years removed from having the worst records in the league and picked first and second overall in the 2011 draft. Carolina picked Cam Newton, a franchise quarterback who his team have built around and was voted the league’s Most Valuable Player (MVP) in 2015. Denver picked Von Miller, the destructive pass-rusher, who is now a five-time Pro Bowler and was MVP in that Super Bowl victory over Newton’s Panthers.

That is how it is supposed to work, competitive parity stemming from a pipeline of talent, but the draft system is not foolproof and there are no guarantees that picking early in the draft, the cream of the college crop, is going to mean success.

Roger Goodell, the NFL commissioner, stands at the start of the 2016 draft (Getty)

Two teams are rooted at 0-7 this season and they are the same teams who picked first and second overall in the 2017 draft. Rebuilding a poor roster takes more than one budding superstar and, if you miss, that can set the whole process back years. If you miss as often as the Cleveland Browns do, you can seemingly stay bad forever.

Which is where we return to those Jacksonville Jaguars, a team that has been so good at being bad that they have managed to earn a top-ten pick in each of the past ten drafts. In a league designed to help bad teams, that is quite the achievement.

What has set the Jags back so badly was, in short, making the wrong picks. In the year that the Panthers and Broncos started their way back to the top with decade-defining players, the Jags swung and missed on Blaine Gabbert, who never looked the part and is now third-choice quarterback for the Arizona Cardinals. They picked Justin Blackmon the next year at fifth overall, who hasn’t played since 2013 due to drug suspensions. 2013 pick Luke Joeckel was a huge bust. 2014 pick Blake Bortles is their current quarterback, but remains their weakest link. If they get a quarterback next off-season then they could be a Super Bowl contender but for now, they are a team fighting for playoff contention thanks to a defense that is young, ferocious and talented, built around 2015 and 2016 first-rounders Dante Fowler and Jalen Ramsey plus free-agent acquisitions Calais Campbell and Malik Jackson.

Where the Jags have picked in the draft in recent years, the Rams haven’t been far away.

The Rams have also tried a number of different routes to the top and last year traded the house to move up and pick first overall, where they selected quarterback Jared Goff. After struggling in his first year, Goff has enjoyed a turnaround thanks to the sharp offensive mind of 31-year-old rookie head coach Sean McVay, superior offensive line play and an improved cast of weapons around him. At 5-2 the Rams are legitimate playoff contenders at the moment and a team that has been – eventually – revived thanks to the league’s quest for parity and some good internal decisions.

Goff had a disastrous rookie year but is now the face of a rising franchise (Getty)

And it also makes you appreciate the brilliance of the New England Patriots, who manage to continue a dynasty year after year with Bill Belichick at the helm and Tom Brady under center.

For all the brilliant minutiae of the NFL observed by Jonathan at Twickenham, the draft system is one of the league’s strongest suits in a time when other sports are seeing the rich get richer and everyone else increasingly ignored.

Think of India, Australia and the ECB carving up international cricket’s revenues between themselves or the Premier League’s ‘big six’ making a grab for more TV cash in recent weeks. This happens in every free market sport but in one of the world’s freest markets there is a league whose desire to keep everyone competitive remains arguably its greatest attraction. The rise of the Jags and the Rams is a timely reminder of that.