The stunning downfall of Jaguars head coach Doug Pederson is complete.
Revered as a hero in Jacksonville after leading the team to an AFC South title in 2022, the franchise fired Pederson and cleared the table for new leadership in 2025 after one of the most disappointing seasons in franchise history. Jacksonville finished a 4-13 season on Sunday with a 26-23 overtime loss.
Since that playoff season and an 8-3 start last year, Pederson and the Jaguars imploded. Jacksonville is 5-18 since briefly holding the No. 1 seed in the AFC last season. He ends his time in Jacksonville with a 22-29 record in the regular season and 1-1 in the playoffs.
Pederson’s fate was likely sealed before Sunday’s regular season finale against the Colts. A slump that started last year and the inability of the Jaguars to find out how to win games in 2024 included an NFL-record 10 losses by a possession or less. That was with the most expensive roster in franchise history.
Jaguars owner Shad Khan said before the season that it was his belief that this was the “best team assembled” since the city was awarded a team. The team handed out massive contract extensions and guaranteed more than $80 million in free agency to a significantly underwhelming group. Those players were headlined by Baalke favorite, defensive tackle Arik Armstead, who finished with two sacks. Instead of the best team assembled, the franchise’s 30th season was a nightmare from the get-go. They started 0-4 and seemed to get worse by the week. During last week’s final media availability, Pederson acknowledged the season being the most difficult of his coaching career.
Another restart for Jaguars
Now, the franchise faces an all-too-familiar scenario, a reset of the team yet again. Under the franchise’s first owner, Wayne Weaver, the Jaguars had two head coaches from 1995 to 2011, Tom Coughlin and Jack Del Rio. Under Khan, whose purchase of the team from Weaver was complete in 2012, the Jaguars have made five head coaching hires and struggled to get them right with any sort of consistency.
Those coaches, Mike Mularkey, Gus Bradley, Doug Marrone, Urban Meyer, and Pederson, each had their own issues. Mularkey lasted one season (2-14). Meyer didn’t even make it a full year (2-11) before he was fired in the early morning of Dec. 16, 2021. Bradley was a dreadful 14-48 while working with arguably the worst rosters since the expansion year. Marrone led Jacksonville to an AFC championship game but bottomed out with a 1-15 year in 2020 that led Khan to hire Meyer and proclaim that “I got it right.”
Meyer is in the conversation as the worst NFL head coach ever.
When Khan hired Pederson in 2022 to clean up the mess of the Meyer debacle, he was lauded as the stabilizing head coach Jacksonville needed. He did bring the credibility of a Super Bowl title to Jacksonville. Khan boldly said during the hire of Pederson, “Well, I was just a year premature. So I did get it right,” a reference to his Meyer statement.
And it looked like Khan nailed the hire with Pederson, who led the Eagles to the 2017 Super Bowl with backup quarterback Nick Foles. Jaguars fans had visions of the same offensive success with Pederson coaching Trevor Lawrence. That was the case for the second half of 2022 when Lawrence developed into one of the NFL’s best quarterbacks during a spectacular closing stretch that resulted in the AFC South title and a playoff win over the Chargers. But since that span, Lawrence and the Jaguars offense went into a spiral from which Pederson could never recover.
Offensive inconsistencies continued
Even before Lawrence went on injured reserve and underwent season-ending shoulder surgery, he was inconsistent.
Pederson’s offensive acumen was part of the reason Jacksonville hired him, but the Jaguars haven’t seen that since last year. With a floundering offense and terrible hire in defensive coordinator Ryan Nielsen, nothing went right. Jacksonville lost to Miami in Week 1, the lasting memory from that game being Travis Etienne’s fumble on his way to scoring a touchdown that helped lead to a Dolphins comeback. The defense under Nielsen was far worse than it was under Mike Caldwell, whom Pederson fired after the 2023 season. Jacksonville ranked 29th in yards allowed per game (389.9 ypg) and last in both takeaways (9) and pass defense (257.4 pyg).
The challenge for Pederson’s successor will be to remake the offense and help get Lawrence to the next level. Meyer had Lawrence for 13 games in 2021, and that was a disaster. Pederson and offensive coordinator Press Taylor had their bright spots with Lawrence, but ultimately never unlocked his full potential for a consistent amount of time. The development of Lawrence is priority No. 1. The Jaguars re-signed Lawrence to a $275 million contract extension last offseason, a contract that has yet to kick in and keeps him tied to the team through 2030.
Khan has shown patience during his time as Jacksonville’s owner, but this debacle was too much to gloss over.
Big contracts, little to show for them
In addition to the contract given to Lawrence a year before it needed to happen, the Jaguars also handed out big money extensions to both Tyson Campbell and Josh Hines-Allen in the offseason, likely leading to Khan’s brazen proclamation that the 2024 Jaguars were the best in the franchise’s 30 years. The results were far from ideal. Lawrence was up and down, dinged by inconsistencies early, disappointing play from receivers, and then his own injuries. Hines-Allen was solid, but he finished with eight sacks after a franchise-record 17.5 last year. Campbell struggled to stay healthy.
Jacksonville’s free agent class has underwhelmed mightily, which is more of a reflection on Trent Baalke than Pederson. Receiver Gabe Davis struggled before going on injured reserve. Defensive lineman Armstead was a colossal disappointment, getting $28 million in guaranteed money and producing two sacks. Return specialist Devin Duvernay was ineffective. Cornerback Ronald Darby and safety Darnell Savage were nonfactors. Darby was inactive against the Colts and missed the final four games of the season.
Khan fired head coach Bradley in 2016 after a 2-12 start (and a 14-48 career record). He fired general manager Dave Caldwell during the team’s 1-10 start in 2020, a season where the Jaguars went a franchise-worst 1-15. Khan dismissed executive vice president Tom Coughlin in 2019 after a scathing report from the NFL Player’s Association, less than a year after Coughlin and the Jaguars reached the AFC title game. And then there was the train wreck of Meyer’s 2-11 start in 2021 and his midnight firing.
Pederson had back-to-back nine-win seasons and a playoff win, but things spiraled since the midpoint of 2023. General manager Baalke’s tenure has been highlighted by extreme highs and lows, but the roster deficiencies are tough to overlook.
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