JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Jacksonville Jaguars head coach Doug Pederson is on the hot seat. In fact, right now, his seat is hotter than a Florida summer.
Pederson is leading a team that is 2-8 and if the season ended today, the Jags would hold the No. 1 pick in the 2025 NFL draft, something that would seem impossible if you told that to a fan last year when the Jaguars were 8-3 and held the top spot in the AFC playoff race. The team lost five of its last six games last season and missed the playoffs. It hasn’t been the same team since.
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Some think that following the team‘s game against the Detroit Lions, one of the NFL’s best, Pederson could be relieved of his coaching duties as the team heads into its Week 12 bye.
Josina Anderson, an NFL insider and former reporter, posted Friday on X that, according to one of her sources, owner Shad Khan prefers to wait to make a decision after the season, but if the Jaguars get blown out by the Lions, “change is possibly coming.”
Before hiring Pederson, the Jaguars’ fanbase had hit rock bottom after enduring 11 months of the Urban Meyer administration. The only direction for the team to go was up.
Enter Pederson, whose time in Philadelphia came to an end in an eerily similar way to how things are currently transpiring in Jacksonville.
But, he had a Super Bowl win on his resume and elevated the play of Carson Wentz to near-MVP levels before injury derailed his season in 2017. So, the prospect of matching an offensive-minded coach with a young quarterback in Trevor Lawrence seemed promising.
Then, the 2022 season happened. The Jaguars, after starting the year with a 2-6 record and almost squandering any hope left in its fanbase, finished first in the AFC South for the first time since 2017, qualified for the playoffs for the first time since the same year, and followed that up by pulling off an unimaginable comeback against the Los Angeles Chargers.
Expectations, reasonably, began to form. Fans started to picture what another year for franchise quarterback Lawrence and Pederson would look like, expecting more chemistry, more wins, and perhaps even more playoff success.
The team began the 2023 season with a bang, seemingly validating those expectations carried over from the previous season.
And then, the ship began to sink. And it hasn’t stopped sinking.
Jacksonville ended the 2023 season with a 9-8 record, winning only one game between Weeks 13 and 18. Heading into Week 11 of the 2024 NFL season, Pederson’s squad is in last place in a rather uncompetitive AFC South division and has lost 13 of 16 games dating back to the 2023 season.
On FOX NFL Sunday, analyst and former head coach Jimmie Johnson said he believes Pederson will not be the Jags' head coach at the end of the season, but also added that it doesn‘t matter who the team’s head coach is because, “other than the people in Jacksonville and maybe in London, who really cares?”
Heading into the 2024 season, the Jaguars spent more than $100 million more than the next team on roster construction, including franchise-record-setting contracts given to Josh Hines-Allen and Lawrence, and nearly $150 million spent on free agents such as Arik Armstead, Gabe Davis, Mitch Morse, Ezra Cleveland, Darnell Savage and others.
That‘s the sign of a team that believes it has what it takes to compete for a playoff position and beyond, but the results haven’t materialized.
However, while discussing the team‘s recent loss to Minnesota on the News4JAGS podcast, WJXT sports editor Justin Barney and sports anchor Jamal St. Cyr noted that because a few potential wins are remaining on the Jags schedule, coupled with Khan’s propensity to remain patient with struggling coaches, that Pederson may be given one more opportunity to prove himself next season.
“I think Doug gets a chance to save himself,” St. Cyr said. “Historically, Shad is patient, so I believe he’ll try and allow Doug to separate himself.”
Barney echoed St. Cyr‘s sentiment, saying Khan has probably been “too patient” when it comes to firing head coaches. He also adds that while Pederson is “not without fault,” a lot of blame should be placed at the feet of general manager Trent Baalke.
“Baalke deserves more of the blame for the roster‘s construction and some of these contracts,” he said. “For whatever reason, the team has had a 15-game window where they were one of the best in the league...but it’s been bookended by bad, awful football.”
The two noted that Baalke has done “some good things,” but also expressed little to no confidence in the general manager’s ability to use the inevitably high draft pick the team will receive for the 2025 NFL Draft on a position of need.
“I give him credit for certain finds like Ventrell Miller and Brian Thomas Jr.,” St. Cyr said. ”But they used a top 100 pick on a tight end when you already had Evan Engram, you used a top 100 pick on Devin Lloyd, which has yielded middling results...you also took Travis Etienne in the first round, something that isn‘t done in today’s NFL."
He continued, “[Baalke] is taking valuable picks and using them on positions that have been devalued by today’s NFL standards, which leads to deficiencies at crucial positions like the offensive line.”
The New Orleans Saints fired their coach, Dennis Allen, after losing seven straight games despite starting the season with high expectations after jumping out of the gate to 2-0. The New York Jets also fired their head coach, Robert Saleh, after an underwhelming start to a season that began with lofty expectations.
Regardless of who is to blame in Jacksonville, most fans would likely agree on one thing: a change at the top is necessary, whether it‘s the head coach, the general manager, or both.
