When the 2024 regular season ended, it felt like a given that the Jacksonville Jaguars were going to move on from head coach Doug Pederson and GM Trent Baalke following a highly disappointing four win season.
However, as news came that the team was moving on from Pederson, that same news didn’t come for Baalke–until it was too late.
Under Baalke, last offseason’s big free agency swings didn’t pay off and the team hasn’t gotten enough contributions from many of its draft picks over the years.
But more than that, Baalke’s past, specifically the number of head coaches that have been fired while he’s been the general manager both in Jacksonville and in San Francisco, proceeds him and seems to define him in NFL circles.
There’s a reason that the last time the Jaguars were searching for a head coach it took them so long to eventually find a candidate in Pederson. With a player of Trevor Lawrence’s caliber at the quarterback position, this should be a job that the top coaching candidates want to deeply explore. Except, for the most part, it isn’t.
Everyone–fans, reporters, talking heads–all seemed to know that moving on from Baalke immediately following the regular season was what the Jaguars had to do to be in the mix for a top coaching candidate. Well, everyone except the Jaguars’ themselves.
“I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater,” Shad Khan said of cleaning house. “We have a lot of things that are working that can always be improved and will improve. There are other things that are not working and need to be fixed. The coaching, that is an area that we need to fix now. Certainly over the last few years we built a football administration and a lot of things are working well there.”
The delay in what seemed like an inevitable decision has potentially cost Jacksonville their top two head coaching choices. Dianna Russini would report that the “setup” in Jacksonville didn’t align with what Ben Johnson was looking for.
On Wednesday, Liam Coen withdrew his name from head coaching contention to stay with the Bucs, where he got a pay raise–although not anywhere near what a head coach makes–and no guarantees that he would get the opportunity to be the head coach in Tampa Bay down the road.
That was apparently the tipping point for Shad Khan, who announced later that afternoon that the team had parted ways with Baalke.
However, now it is the third week of January and the top head coaching candidates and the top general manager candidates have found new teams.
Now, who knows, maybe without Baalke the Jaguars still don’t land Johnson or Coen, and this isn’t to say that whoever the Jaguars do hire as the next head coach and general manager can’t find success. But from a pure process and operation standpoint, this isn’t want stable organizations do.
