Almost three years ago, it seemed like a perfect fit. The Jacksonville Jaguars nearly mutinied under head coach Urban Meyer, quarterback Trevor Lawrence looked like a disaster and the franchise was headed for another season of double-digit losses. In the extension of Shad Khan’s ownership of the team, it felt like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity with a generational quarterback was in jeopardy.
In response, Khan hired Doug Pederson and then explained the decision to the outside world.
“Why Doug Pederson? He is a man who has accomplished a lot,” Khan said in February 2022, sitting next to Pederson during his introductory press conference. “The best offensive coordinator, an experienced head coach, won three division titles in five years, a man who just four years ago won the Super Bowl. And he did it for the Philadelphia Eagles, a city very similar to Jacksonville, which was looking for its first championship. So in the end, we have someone who has been there. A head coach, quarterback developer. A man who creates a culture for both players and coaches. A culture they will thrive in and a leader who commands respect and inspires those around him. And a man who wins.”
Imagine Khan’s dismay Sunday, after watching his Jaguars lose an agonizing game 24-20 to a Houston Texans team that is following the precise trajectory the Jaguars charted when Pederson got his hands on the team. For the third year of your mandate? Jacksonville was supposed to be fighting for AFC supremacy and Lawrence should have taken big steps toward the league’s elite level of quarterbacks. Instead, time in Jacksonville is a flat circle and the Jaguars are trapped in the trench of Friedrich Nietzsche’s eternal return.
This is just another way of saying that the Jaguars are what they were… and inevitably can become what they already were.
That’s what this 0-4 start feels like. Just the latest seasonal marathon of promised horizons taking place on a treadmill. As Sunday offered a familiar mile marker to nowhere, Pederson was asked if he was worried about his job situation following the loss to the Texans.
“My status? No,” Pederson said, before adding: “That’s a little bit of a weird question, but that’s okay.”
The fact that Pederson thinks it’s an odd question gives away his own message in that 2022 press conference, when he took a moment during his introduction to send a message to his new team.
“For our players, and I think this is very important, my only goal, from the moment I was hired, is to help them be the best they can be, to help our team win football games,” Pederson said. . “And it’s our job as coaches to put our players in position to be successful, to develop their talent one player at a time, one unit at a time, and that’s how you win games in the National Football League.”
On Sunday, Pederson appeared to be sending a new message, following a question about whether he would consider taking snaps from offensive coordinator Press Taylor.
“For what? I thought he called a great game,” Pederson said of Taylor. “As coaches, we can’t go out and make plays, right? It’s a two-way street. So you guys can sit here and point finger all they want and that’s fine. Point it straight at me.
No one really needs to point fingers at Pederson right now. The results are doing it for him. They are 1-9 in their last 10 games, and that win came against the league-worst Carolina Panthers in 2023. Their offense has one of the worst third-down conversion rates in the league. And despite finally being healthy again, their franchise quarterback is completing a career-low 53.2 percent of his passes through four games, showing an inability to be consistent or efficient on intermediate passes and having some ineffectiveness. familiar in the red zone, reminding everyone all the way back to his rookie season.
As of Monday, Lawrence will have gone an inexplicable 309 days since he won a football game, which is an alarming statistic for a presumed generational quarterback who just signed a five-year, $275 million extension. Especially when you focus on some of the throws he misses. Like the deep third-quarter throw to Christian Kirk, who had enough separation to have a clear path for a touchdown, but not enough speed to reach the ball that Lawrence sailed 4 yards over his head.
If the two most important factors in Pederson’s signing were winning consistently and developing his franchise quarterback, the results aren’t great. Taylor’s scoring offense is among the worst in the league. He is in the bottom third in total yards and passing yards. Lawrence is in the middle of that offense. Which means if Pederson thinks Taylor is calling good games, someone else isn’t meeting the standard. And the first person in line to turn the key on an offense is the quarterback. And if the quarterback isn’t the problem, then it’s the surrounding pieces of an offense that general manager Trent Baalke built from the ground up. And if it’s not Press Taylor… or Trevor Lawrence… or Baalke’s squad… then who is the problem in the middle of this operation?
As Pederson indicated, point the finger at it. He is the one who took responsibility for getting this up and running, so the onus ultimately falls on him until he wants to clarify where the failure is occurring. And not in vain, Philadelphia Eagles sources leaked the problems that owner Jeffrey Lurie had with Taylor when he was part of Pederson’s staff in Philadelphia. The confrontation over Taylor ultimately became part of the Eagles’ mutual parting ways with Pederson in 2021.
This is not to say that Pederson shouldn’t be able to operate his coaching staff as he sees fit. But it definitely shows how far he will go to defend Taylor’s position or performance as one of his assistant coaches. Which should at least raise the question of whether Pederson can honestly evaluate the job Taylor is doing, or resume the play-calling duties that Pederson himself claimed were a source of personal pride when he got the Jaguars job.
Anyway, the results are what they are. The Jaguars are in an 0-4 hole that is essentially impossible to recover from in the NFL, with only the 1992 San Diego Chargers making the postseason after losing their first four games. Now compare that to the expectations of Khan, who not only hired Pederson to bring in Lawrence and win games, but also stated before the season that expectations were now winning with what he believed was the Jaguars’ best roster. that I had never seen.
Perhaps the only thing the Jaguars have going for them is that Houston is a quality team in the AFC, maybe even one of the best in the conference. And the Jaguars took them to the final minute of regulation. If that’s a representation that Jacksonville is on the verge of a breakthrough, then the schedule may be offering an opportunity. The Indianapolis Colts come to town next week amid their own problems. Star running back Jonathan Taylor is nursing a sprained ankle, and quarterback Anthony Richardson went down Sunday with a hip injury, being replaced by 39-year-old (but very effective) Joe Flacco.
While that’s not exactly a chance to “get it right,” it’s the type of game the Jaguars should be able to win at home. If they don’t, that 0-5 hole will start to look like where Pederson’s job is being buried.