Major changes could be coming to the Jacksonville Jaguars if they do not beat the Detroit Lions on Sunday.
NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport reported on Saturday night that dramatic moves could be made regarding head coach Doug Pederson and perhaps general manager Trent Baalke as soon as this week with a loss.
The Jaguars, who will be playing Sunday’s game without starting quarterback Trevor Lawrence, are a 14-point underdog against one of the NFL’s best teams. So a loss seems very, very possible.
According to Rapoport’s report, there is a sense of “doom” within the Jaguars organization as people anticipate the changes in the midst of a wildly disappointing season. The Jaguars are one of the NFL’s worst teams at 2-8 and are a very real contender to pick No. 1 overall for the third time in the past five years.
Pederson is in his third year with the team after taking over at the start of the 2022 season. His hiring was seen as a major turning point for the Jaguars as he brought a sense of credibility to an organization that had lost almost all of it due to the Urban Meyer failure during the 2021 season. In his first year, Pederson led the Jaguars to a stunning one-year turnaround that saw the team go from 3-14 to 9-8 and the top spot in the AFC South, while also winning a playoff game.
The Jaguars seemed to be a young, talented team on the rise early in 2023 when they got off to an 8-3 start and had one of the best records in the AFC.
They ended up finishing the season on a 1-5 run, and when combined with this season’s 2-8 start, are just 3-13 over their past 16 games.
The Jaguars attempted to spend big money in free agency and made a huge investment in Lawrence to make him one of the highest-paid players in NFL history. None of it has worked, and with Lawrence regressing — and now sidelined — that investment is looking like a costly mistake.
With all of that being the case, the result of Sunday’s game should not really make or break any futures for Pederson or Baalke. If ownership is already having the discussion about making changes, and if changes are necessary, the result of one game should not carry that much weight. At this point the only that could — and perhaps should — prevent those changes is if Jacksonville somehow won out and played somewhat competitive football.
That seems unlikely. So change is probably on the horizon no matter what.
