Back to the hot seat? Jaguars undermine Doug Pederson’s job security with ‘a lot of quit’ One has to wonder if election fraud in the NFL might be legitimate, because it surely appears like that vote of confidence Doug Pederson just received might not count for anything.
The head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars: watched his team get wrecked 35-16 in London on Sunday by the Chicago Bears – just one day after Jags owner Shad Khan, in an exclusive interview with The Florida Times-Union, expressed confidence in Pederson and GM Trent Baalke.
- “Every game is competitive. A loss is a loss, but (it’s about) how you lose,” Khan said. “To me, the three games we lost early in the season, it’s disappointing, we could have won them.”
- Not so Sunday. After taking a 3-0 lead in the first quarter, Jacksonville scored seven of the game’s next 42 points. When the dust settled, the Jaguars owned a league-worst 1-5 record.
- One player may as well have cast a ballot against his coach.
“Yeah, it was really bad,” Jacksonville safety Andre Cisco told Action Sports Jax following the loss. “A lot of quit. … You can feel when we’re playing as one and when we’re not.
- “Just not a good product at all.”
- Cisco, who made seven tackles and intercepted a pass, didn’t stop there.
- “There’s no excuse for a lack of effort,” he added.
Words like “quit” and phrases such as “lack of effort,” when associated with an embattled NFL squad, can very often fast-track a coach to the unemployment line. It seems unlikely Pederson would become the second straight coach to be fired after losing in London – the.
New York Jets dropped Robert Saleh: on Tuesday after owner Woody Johnson, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom, had seen enough – especially because the Jags will “host” the New England Patriots at Wembley Stadium next weekend.
Pederson said Sunday he still feels that he has Khan’s backing. Yet asked to sum up his feelings in the aftermath of the latest defeat admitted he was, “Defeated, obviously. I feel for the players and the coaches.”
Asked if the Jaguars are in must-win mode, Pederson replied: “I would say so. I would say everything here on out, quite frankly. … I would say that, yeah, these games moving forward are just that.” Jacksonville is a proper mess. After looking like a solid bet to defend their 2022 AFC South crown last season, Pederson’s team has dropped 10 of its last 12.
Jacksonville can forget about the playoffs. The offense is stagnant, the defense is at or near the bottom of the league in several metrics – notably against the pass after getting scorched anew Sunday – and all after Khan plowed hundreds of millions into the roster during the offseason.
And that’s really the main issue. The likes of Arik Armstead, Gabe Davis, Evan Engram, Darnell Savage, Mitch Morse and Ezra Cleveland haven’t made a difference. Pass rusher Josh Hines-Allen, now the NFL’s highest-paid defender (5 years, $141.3 million) not named Nick Bosa or Chris Jones, has been awfully quiet. And then there’s Trevor Lawrence.
The quarterback, taken with the first overall draft pick three years ago and expected to make a Peyton Manning-adjacent impact in Duval County, was rewarded again for potential – not production – when Khan signed off on a five-year, $275 million extension in June.
Rewarded to the tune of $55 million a year, Lawrence matched the Cincinnati Bengals’ Joe Burrow as the league’s best-compensated quarterback (until they were superseded by Dak Prescott, when the Dallas Cowboys gave him a four-year, $240 million pact prior to Week 1).