JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Jaguars fans expected a full housecleaning. Instead, they got a light dusting, some spackle, a splash of touch-up paint and a whole lot of disappointment. Hey, Jaguars fans are plenty used to it by now, right?
The Jaguars needed a full reset, top to bottom, inside and out. Instead, owner Shad Khan sent one part of the problem out the door and held onto the other. Perhaps an even bigger problem.
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RELATED: Doug Pederson was fired by the Jaguars. But many fans are mad GM Trent Baalke is sticking around
General manager Trent Baalke survived another swing of the firing cycle, one that has left the team looking to fill the third head coaching vacancy during his time in town.
Khan announced that Doug Pederson was gone but Baalke was staying put, largely due to him doing some good things with the franchise. Something like that.
Khan obviously trusts Baalke, but that trust may be to his own detriment. Just call him Teflon Trent.
I do believe Pederson is a good coach. He was the perfect leader at the time of his hire. Jacksonville was coming off the black eye of the Urban Meyer tenure and the Jaguars landed Pederson, who brought stability and a recent Super Bowl to town. That relationship ran its course, and the call to look for new leadership was correct. Pederson’s allegiance to offensive coordinator Press Taylor joined with the abysmal hire of defensive coordinator Ryan Nielsen sealed his fate. It was time.
But Baalke escaping the pendulum reinforced that Khan remains blinded by whatever nonsense Baalke is selling.
Baalke is in the final year of his contract and he has done some things right during his time in Jacksonville. You can’t deny that.
The 2024 draft class appears solid. Receiver Brian Thomas Jr. looks like the best selection of Baalke’s Jacksonville tenure. Later-round picks like Parker Washington and Cam Little have paid off. And Baalke had a keen eye for talent in San Francisco, drafting players like Colin Kaepernick, Arik Armstead, and DeForest Buckner.
But hanging on to Baalke is a terrible decision, one that can’t be justified by Khan pointing to a few things like the salary cap and some draft hits. Baalke arrived as director of player personnel in 2020, a roster that was still under control by then-GM Dave Caldwell. Khan fired Caldwell during that 1-15 season and elevated Baalke. The Jaguars went 3-14 in Baalke’s first season as GM alongside hapless Meyer.
Then came lightning in a bottle. The 9-8 season in 2022 where the team won the AFC South and a playoff game. An 8-3 start in 2023 made it seem like the Jaguars had turned the corner. They hadn’t. They’re in a far worse position now than they were even a year ago, saddled with expensive contracts for players like Josh Hines-Allen, Trevor Lawrence and Tyson Campbell that aren’t getting any cheaper over the years.
This is not an ascending team like it was in 2023. The 2024 Jaguars were not a good football team. You can blame some of that on injuries, some of that on coaching and some of that on bad luck. They lost an NFL-record 10 one-possession games. Khan took shots at both the offense and defense, saying the play calling was too predictable and the defense managed to get worse after the coordinator change.
But a large part of the struggles can be more simply attributed: This is not an elite-quality roster.
That falls on the shoulders of the GM, the architect who put this roster together. Jacksonville handed out mega-extensions to Hines-Allen, Lawrence and Campbell and it’s fair to say that all three of those players underperformed. The free-agent class was not only underwhelming, it was expensive.
Pederson was asked a couple of months ago if he was the person responsible for suggesting to Khan that this was the “best team assembled” by the Jaguars, ever. Khan made that ridiculous and blasphemous statement before the season began, and it looks even worse now.
Pederson looked uncomfortable during that exchange and eventually said he was not the person who sold Khan on that pipe dream, which leaves Baalke as the person who sold Khan on this overpaid, underperforming crew being the best to ever walk the hall of EverBank Stadium.
And yet, he’s still the one calling the shots for an owner who has yet to figure it out.