JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Doug Pederson has heard about the struggles in Jacksonville.
He isn’t paying attention to it at all.
It’s all about going forward for Pederson, who introduced his coaching staff Friday morning and is clearly focused on changing things in Jacksonville in 2022.
Sure, the history is tough to overlook.
The Jaguars have reached the playoffs just once in owner Shad Khan’s 10 seasons and are picking first in the NFL draft for the second consecutive year. The Urban Meyer experiment lasted all of 13 games before Khan booted the disgraced coach to the side.
The Jaguars hired Pederson two weeks ago and it’s been all about assembling a staff and moving ... forward and not back.
“It’s hard for me to speak to what has gone wrong or is wrong or whatever. I don’t know, quite frankly, and I really don’t care about that,” Pederson said Friday. “What I care about is moving forward from two weeks ago when I was hired. That’s what we’re trying to change. That’s what I’m trying to change. I’m trying to turn this into a winning program, a winning organization.
“Do you learn from the past? Of course. You study it, of course. But at the same time, my focus has always been a forward-thinking approach to everything we do.”
Pederson, who was joined by offensive coordinator Press Taylor and defensive coordinator Mike Caldwell, said that he does plan to call plays during games this season. That’s something Pederson did with the Eagles but said his approach will be “collaborative” alongside Taylor, passing game coordinator Jim Bob Cooter and quarterbacks coach Mike McCoy.
Pederson said that he sees a team with talent and potential, just the need for more consistency.
“You see the offense taking strides throughout the course of the year. You see the defense making those strides. Now it’s about just we’ve got to be consistent every week. There’s got to be consistency, and there’s got to be ownership with that,” Pederson said.
“Are we going to go out and add talent? Yeah, we’re going to add talent. We’re going to add competition. We’re going to bring value to the roster. Every team does that, and we’re no exception to that. But I see talent here. I said I think in my opening remarks a couple weeks ago that it’s not an overnight fix, and it’s going to be a fix that we’ve got to do it one player at a time, one coach at a time, and get it turned around.”
It’s been a busy time for Taylor.
In addition to being hired by the Jaguars, his brother, Zac, led the Bengals to the Super Bowl. Now, he’s got his chance to lead in his first time as an offensive coordinator. Taylor was on Pederson’s staff in Philadelphia, serving as a quarterbacks coach and passing game coordinator. Taylor said that he and Pederson work very well together.
“We’ve had a lot of conversations over five years. We’ve sat in a lot of rooms speaking the same language in terms of our terminology offensively and grew comfortable with how we like to attack things or how we like to respond to things or what we call things,” Taylor said. “That’s kind of one of the things we’ve spent a lot of time as an offensive staff just in the week we’ve been together of trying to get on the same page terminology wise. That’s a big thing.”
Caldwell, who will be a coordinator for the first time, said that he’s going to let his players dictate what kind of scheme the Jaguars run. He comes from a background working with Todd Bowles, and said that he wants to run a defense that will “affect the quarterback.”
“I’m going to look at the personnel, understand what they do well, let them go out there and do it well, and that’s where success comes from,” Caldwell said.