After all, Trent Baalke is in Jacksonville.
The Jaguars announced Wednesday afternoon that they had broken up with their general manager amid the search for a new head coach.
“After several conversations with Trent Baalke this week, we have both concluded that it is in our mutual best interests to respectfully part ways, effective immediately,” owner Shad Khan said in a statement. “Trent leaves us with my deepest gratitude for his efforts over the past five seasons. Ethan Waugh will serve as interim general manager and will play an important role, along with others, as we continue the process of interviewing candidates to serve as our new coach in boss. “I am deeply committed to building a winner here in Jacksonville and look forward to introducing a new head coach who will make that happen for both our players and our fans.”
Baalke has been with the Jaguars for the past four seasons. The team made the playoffs just once under his direction and just finished a 4-13 campaign. Baalke was hired ahead of the 2021 campaign, in which coach Urban Meyer was fired after less than a year. The team then fired head coach Doug Pederson earlier this month. Overall, Baalke compiled a 25-43 record in Jacksonville. The position marked his second as a general manager in the league, following a six-year run with the San Francisco 49ers, who reached a Super Bowl under his direction.
When the Jaguars fired Pederson at the end of the regular season, Khan said he wasn’t going to fire Baalke as well. He didn’t want to completely overhaul the franchise, he said, as doing so would be “like shooting yourself in the foot.”
But in the weeks since, things haven’t gone well for the Jaguars. The favorite for the head coaching job, Liam Coen, opted to remain with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He dropped out of the race for the job in Jacksonville early Wednesday and instead negotiated a new contract with Tampa Bay that will make him one of the highest-paid coordinators in the league. The Jaguars are now back to the drawing board to find their next head coach, who will be their fourth since Baalke selected quarterback Trevor Lawrence with the first overall pick in the 2021 draft.
It took him a few more weeks to get there, but now it appears Khan is looking for a complete restart in Jacksonville. Based on how things have gone with the Jaguars in recent years, whoever replaces both Pederson and Baalke will have a tough job ahead of them.