All they’re asking for is a little disrespect

The Jacksonville Jaguars have had a terrific season. Despite playing in the NFL’s toughest division and losing their starting quarterback for three games, they finished 11-5 and ran the ball more effectively than any other AFC team.

But when it came to players being voted to the Pro Bowl, they were shut out.

Some teams have all the luck.

You see, now that it’s playoff time, everyone is hungry for disrespect.

The NFL postseason isn’t just about every team looking for a slight edge, but every team looking for the edge of being slighted. The snub is the rub.

So it must be somewhat disconcerting to the Jaguars (11-5) that they are two-point favorites for Saturday’s first-round game at Pittsburgh, where Jacksonville hopes to become the first opposing team to win twice in the same season.

Yes, a point spread is established only to balance the betting on both sides and isn’t intended to be a prediction of which team will win, but the Steelers (10-6) are happy to embrace their underdog status.

“We’ve always been underdogs,” receiver Hines Ward said. “We’ve kind of been flying under the radar.”

Ah, under the radar -- a comfortable cruising altitude for any playoff team. The Washington Redskins want to be there.

“Four weeks ago, nobody gave us a chance,” said their star running back, Clinton Portis.

And what about the Tampa Bay Buccaneers? Not only were they blanked when Pro Bowl players were announced, but their entire division went 0-for-Honolulu. Those guys are counting their lucky non-stars.

Buccaneers quarterback Jeff Garcia has made a career out of proving skeptics wrong. He’s the overlord of underdogs, and rejection is just more kindling for his bonfire. This season, when he played San Francisco, his former 49ers teammates knew what they were up against.

“I’m sure he’s going to be fired up, he’s a competitor and I’m sure there’s added incentive any time you feel like you were thrown out,” San Francisco’s Derek Smith said at the time. “That’s just a little more motivation for him to want to come in here and show them they were wrong.”

Everything is bigger in the playoffs, so the no-respect theme looms even larger.

San Diego will be out to prove it can win in the postseason, something it hasn’t done since 1994. Seattle wants to show that the NFC West isn’t a joke. The Tennessee Titans are ready to let the world know they’re still around because they deserve to be -- and not just because the Indianapolis Colts rested Peyton Manning in a pivotal finale.

Even the defending Super Bowl champion Colts can say they have been overlooked. They spent all season living in the long shadow of the New England Patriots. Indianapolis might as well call itself the greatest sideshow on turf.

There’s no escaping it. From now through the Super Bowl, every remaining NFL team will attempt to cast itself as disrespected, denigrated and unfairly discarded onto the scrap heap.

Innocuous comments by opponents will be blown far out of proportion, tweaked and twisted to sound much worse than they were. Anything to give a team the emotional upper hand.

For instance, when Pittsburgh played Seattle in the Super Bowl two years ago, Seahawks tight end Jerramy Stevens made a comment that seemed harmless at the time.

He said his team planned to spoil Jerome Bettis’ retirement party by winning the Super Bowl in Detroit, the hometown of the star Steelers running back.

Pittsburgh linebacker Joey Porter, clearly trolling for inflammatory material, acted as if Stevens had slapped his mom.

“I’ve been asleep all week, but now I got woke up,” Porter said. “I’ve got my first taste of blood and now I’m thirsty for more. Until now, it was ‘Watch what I say,’ ‘I can’t say this, I can’t say that,’ ‘Don’t do anything silly,’ but I’m ready now.

“You look for the guys that say something that aren’t supposed to say nothing, and I feel like he definitely was out of pocket to say what he said. I’m going to make sure he owns up to those words.”

The Steelers wound up winning that game, and a few untimely drops by Stevens played a big role in the outcome.

Weeks later, a league source said the Seahawks knew Porter had gotten into Stevens’ head from the start. How? Because during warmups, when a glowering Porter was lurking around the 50-yard line, a skittish Stevens didn’t venture past the Seattle 20.

That was the embodiment of someone distorting an everyday remark into an insult, then taking full advantage.

It’s something the Patriots have done beautifully with Spygate. They were caught breaking the rules, videotaping the defensive hand signals of the New York Jets, and were docked $750,000 and a first-round draft pick.

As it turned out, though, every Patriots opponent paid the price.

Now, if you can believe it, even some New England players say their team isn’t getting the respect it deserves.

“We’ve had guys talk trash; we’ve been the underdog,” Ellis Hobbs said recently. “We know what it feels like to be talked down to all the time.”

Do you think the Patriots are going to take that? Of course not. Maybe that’s why receiver Randy Moss beat everyone to the punch last Saturday when addressing the media after his team completed a 16-0 regular season.

“Hats off to us,” Moss said.

Finally, respect.

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sam.farmer@latimes.com