Gene, how are you? I'm doing well, how are you guys?
Excellent, thank you for taking the time to join us. I guess, I'm glad you're good. How are the Jaguars right now? Not good, right? Well, the optics certainly don't look good, right? You know, when you make a decision to fire a GM, you know, basically two weeks or more after you should have done it, and then you do it in the middle of the coaching search after you've appointed this guy as the head of the coaching search, it doesn't look very good.
It looks terrible. And so what is the fan response right now to Shahid Khan? Because he sat on a Zoom conference three weeks ago with Trent Baalke and explained that he's keeping him, but he would still consider firing him. Like the fans got to be sick of him by now, no? Yeah, I mean, yeah. I mean, they're obviously exasperated, right? Now they're rejoicing for the time being because Baalke's gone, right?
But there's another part of them that think, well, okay, as I've already written for the lead to my column tomorrow, what took you so long? So it's just, it's just another, unfortunately, it just gives the people who laugh at the Jaguars anyway, more ammunition to keep laughing. And so, you know, but, you know, it's not like Shahid Khan is going to sell the team. And it's not like there's not going to be a coaching search or now a GM search, you know, you've just got to, you know, moving forward, hope that he can get it right, because he does not have a reputation for picking good leaders. So Gene, we've heard this morning, obviously Ian Cohen rejected or took his name out of the hat. We then heard that Trent Baalke, the GM is getting the boot after Doug Peterson got fired weeks ago.
So what's next? We heard Rob Saleh has interviewed with them multiple times. What are some realistic possibilities for individuals to lead this team?
Who are they? Well, Robert Saleh has interviewed one time. He interviewed one time. He was the only candidate to come in in person because he was unemployed. So he could, right? The other ones are all employed or with teams or whatever.
And so they could only interview via Zoom. Saleh came to Jacksonville a week ago yesterday, and he's coming back again on Friday to interview in person again. So he, I mean, I could see Robert Saleh being the next head coach. Now, I don't know how happy the Jaguars fans would be about that. I think it would be an ideal choice for where this Jaguars franchise is right now.
I think Robert Saleh, and I know him pretty well from his time here as a linebackers coach, I think he would be the kind of authoritative leader that the Jaguars need right now. They need a culture change. They need somebody to kind of be a little bit more of an iron-fisted leader. I don't mean that you have to have a total dictator or anything like that, like Belichick was. But I do think they need somebody to kind of grab this franchise by the gruff of its neck, frankly, and just sort of, as Tom Coughlin did back in the day, to say, hey, this is how we are going to do things, and we're not varying from it. You guys have got, you know, and I think, you know, Doug Peterson didn't have that kind of heavy hand. Neither did Gus Bradley when he was here. Neither did Doug Marrone when he was here, and certainly Urban Meyer didn't have any kind of a hand whatsoever because he just, you know, messed up his situation in multiple ways. So, I do think that Saleh, even though the Jets experience was terrible, and he's a defensive guy, not an offensive guy, I wouldn't mind seeing Robert Saleh being the head coach of the Jaguars. But again, I say that not knowing who he would bring in and the important role of offensive coordinator to help Trevor Lawrence ascend. Gene Fournette is here with us from the Florida Times-Union. You talk about the offense. You mentioned Trevor Lawrence.
It seems like he's ending another season here with an injury, this time the shoulder. The Jaguars have the fifth selection in the draft. What can they do on the field to improve and especially help out Trevor Lawrence, who they're now paying north of 50 mill a year? Well, one thing they've got to do is fix the worst defense in the National Football League. See, people get so intoxicated with offense, points scored, because, you know, that translates to the entertainment factor, right?
Fans would much rather watch their team lose 35-31 than lose 17-10. But, until you fix that defense, and I think Robert Saleh would be someone that knows how to fix a defense, at least his reputation with the 49ers and with the Jets, indicates that he can make a defense a lot better. Now, what he can do with an offense, it'd be interesting to see what he can do with an offense that actually has a quarterback, because he only had Ann Rogers for five games. That'll be the interesting part. And again, we don't know that it's going to be Saleh.
I don't presume anybody to be a leader in the clubhouse. They're interviewing Patrick Graham, the Las Vegas Raiders defensive coordinator, although part of me wonders if they're just kind of hoping that maybe if he doesn't get the head coaching job that maybe they might consider him as a defensive coordinator. I don't know.
Joe Brady of the Buffalo Bills and Kellen Moore, the Philadelphia Eagles, are obviously still out there, and they both came in for Zoom interviews with the Jaguars. So, you know, we'll see. Who knows? I mean, does Mike McCarthy suddenly get into the mix?
Oh, my goodness. You know, I mean, you don't know. I mean, things take such a twist and turn. Now, you know, Pete Carroll's name has been banded about for the Raiders job, right? So, I mean, there's so many twists and turns in an NFL coaching cycle.
You don't know where it's going to go. And with an owner like Shaad Khan, who's about as unpredictable as there is, that's certainly the case with Jaguars. Is it becoming more public? Has this always been his mode of operation? He's owned the team now for more than a decade.
You look at the decisions from Urban Meyer and the firing of Peterson and now Balki, and then you're getting rejected by other coaches. Has this always kind of been behind the scenes, but now it's a little bit more public? I don't know. That's a lot of times people jump to conclusions, you know, because, you know, most people, including people in the media, get their information by other people in the media. They get out on the Internet, they read, and then they start spouting, you know, stuff in the newspapers and on air saying, well, what I'm hearing, when I hear somebody say what I'm hearing, I don't always think it's them talking to the insiders. So sometimes what I'm hearing is code word for, well, what I read on the Internet. So, you know, there's just so much misinformation out there. And, you know, sometimes it's true, sometimes it's not. And, you know, I had to caution the Jaguar fan base three years ago when everybody thought Byron Leftwich was going to be, was imminently going to be named the head coach of the Jaguars and was going to bring a GM cohort of his from Arizona to be the GM. And, you know, a lot of media, local media, not national media, local media jumped on that bandwagon and ended up with egg on their faces because it turns out Byron Leftwich was never even off of the job. So a lot of, you know, you really have to be careful about where the, what the information is, where it's coming from and just kind of let the process play out. But the problem is we don't want to do that in this day and age. We want to get ahead of the story.
We want to speculate and sometimes speculate, speculating while it can be entertaining and fun to talk about. It can also, you know, be a little bit of an embarrassment when the narrative that you've been pushing turns out to be not that at all. Well, when we look at some of the realities and we're being joined by Jean Fernette from the Florida Times Union, the Urban Meyer situation was a disaster. This is currently a disaster.
There was the unfortunate situation in the front office, in the accounting room, dare I say, from the individual who stole from from inside the company. Like these are these are recent situations over the past few years. And so I'm just wondering what the confidence level is of the fan base.
If they have always felt kind of wary about what's taking place or has it reached ground zero now? Well, I mean, listen, one thing one thing that can't be denied. Shahid Khan's one lost record as an owner is horrific. He's 67 and 150. That's almost a 31 percent win percentage over 13 seasons in NFL history. History talking over, talking about a hundred years of history, no owner. And I think there's 69 of them who have owned a team for at least a decade. No owner has a percentage that low except for John Meekin Jr. of the New Orleans Saints. And he took over an expansion team in 1967.
Think about that. The second lowest win percentage for owner who owned a team for over a decade. Actually, it's I'm sorry, it's not John Meekin. It's actually Hugh Culverhouse of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. But Meekin is right there with him. So two owners who had to take over an expansion franchise are sitting at the bottom of worse records as owners. And Shahid Khan is right there with him.
Yeah, that's you cannot deny that fact. Let's end on a positive note, Gene. If you take a look at this team, what is there to be optimistic about if you're a Jaguars fan?
Well, I would say excuse me, I've just had to devour a bite of food. I would say the fact that Trevor Lawrence is your quarterback. Is he elite or or trending toward elite? No, but I think he I think it's a skill set that you can certainly work with and you've got one of the most promising receivers in the National Football League and Brian Thomas Jr.
So that I think if you're talking about optimism, it starts there. OK. My my biggest concern for the Jaguars is not only are not only is it just the offensive line is just OK, that's all it is. It's not nothing special.
I mean, anything else? Ben Johnson was the hot, hot candidate, right? This whole coaching coaching cycle. Bears and Bears fans are all fired up about having him. Well, Ben Johnson isn't bringing the Detroit Lions offensive line. Jameer Gibbs that already say Brown and Sam Laporta, you know, he's not bringing all those people with him. So, you know, it's hard sometimes to.
Project. Whether a coordinator who is having success with his unit in one city is all of a sudden going to go and be a head coach in another city and have the same kind of success he had as a coordinator. That's a you know, I would say more than half of those guys fail. So it's a crapshoot in the NFL and the Jaguars, you know, my fear for them. Is wondering when Sean Khan is ever going to get around to picking good leaders. He hasn't done it yet. And, you know, so there's going to be a little a little bit of the fan base is going to be wary about whether he's going to make the right decision now, especially since. You know, two of their more coveted candidates said thanks, but no thanks to coming in for it for an interview. They weren't even they weren't even we didn't even know if they're going to be offered the job. You know, Liam Cohen might have been offered the job. We'll never know unless they unless Khan reaches back out to him and tries to get him back in for an interview. Now that now that the GM Trent Bulky is gone, who knows? But. You know, that's rough gone and they this has been an owner willing to spend money and he's trying to win. He just hasn't gone about it the right way.
Maybe one day he'll fall into it by accident. Hey, Jean, thank you so much for taking the time to join us. Where can people follow you and all of your work? I am on on my Twitter is at Jean Fournette is my name and on Jacksonville dot com.
That is the website for the Florida Times Union. Amazing. Well, I know you're going to have plenty to talk about over the next several weeks because eventually they got to do something. Thank you so much, Jean. Appreciate you. Thanks for having me.
