Jaguars' record under Caldwell was a lowly 39-87, punctuated by a current 10-game losing streakGETTY IMAGES
The tenure of Jaguars GM Dave Caldwell "came to a merciful end" yesterday following the team's loss to the Browns, as Caldwell had been "living on borrowed time for too long," according to Gene Frenette of the FLORIDA TIMES-UNION. It just took the "bad optics of a 10-game losing streak and the Jaguars officially being eliminated from the playoffs" for Owner Shad Khan to "finally pull the trigger." Caldwell "can't say his boss failed to give him second or third chances," but since it "didn't change the results, and the losses kept piling up worse than ever before, Khan couldn't let this charade go on." Khan "simply couldn't let the Jaguars' fan base continue to suffer without taking some kind of action," and Caldwell is the "logical first one to the gangplank since he’s been through more losing than anyone else in a meaningful leadership position besides the owner." He "whiffed on too many important draft picks and never found a long-term answer at quarterback, both major factors in an unrelenting losing culture." Khan "might as well get started looking for a GM now." The Texans (Bill O’Brien), Falcons (Thomas Dimitroff) and Lions (Bob Quinn) have "already gotten a head start on their search process by pink-slipping their front-office bosses," so waiting "another four or five weeks would be pointless" (FLORIDA TIMES-UNION, 11/30).
PUBLIC AND PRIVATE CONSIDERATIONS: SI.com's Albert Breer asks, "Why now for Jacksonville?" Khan is "pursuing public money, with a development proposal in front of local politicians, and so the timing of his 100th loss as owner (last week to Pittsburgh) wasn’t great." Additionally, the building in Jacksonville "simply wasn’t a healthy place the last few weeks, with people questioning the motives of others, and the overall desire to win, rather than protecting jobs." As a result, and "as you’d expect, communication became a problem." Part of this "goes back to the ouster" of Exec VP/Football Operations Tom Coughlin last year, and "ridding the building of people with family connections to him." The "feeling, at that point, was that there was an effort to saddle Coughlin will all that went wrong" in '19 after the team's AFC Championship appearance in '18 (SI.com, 11/30).
