You may have seen the month-old quote from Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan circulating around the internet while his Jaguars were getting pummeled, 34–3, at halftime of Monday's prime-time game:
“Winning now is the expectation,” he said. “Make no mistake, this is the best team assembled by the Jacksonville Jaguars, ever. Best players, best coaches. But most importantly, let’s prove it by winning now."
Outside of having his prior head coach abscond from the team after one of these putrid night-game losses to pursue other interests at a bar and grill, this is the most embarrassing moment of Khan’s tenure. The Jaguars are utterly punchless. Trevor Lawrence is making $55 million per season and hasn’t whiffed terra firma since entering the league back in 2021—this, at a time, when Sam Darnold, Baker Mayfield and Andy Dalton are ripping it up. Lawrence’s rookie contract included one playoff appearance. The Buffalo Bills, a team that should have been one of Jacksonville’s peers at this point in the AFC, could have rested its starters at the end of the first quarter of Monday night’s 47–10 rout and still approached mercy rule status.
The problem with Khan’s quote is not that he said it. It’s that he believes whoever told him this information. Here’s what we do not discuss nearly enough when it comes to the business of NFL football: Owners make decisions based largely on whomever is able to work their way into the inner circle and sell themselves in a way that affluent and successful businesspeople can understand, package and sell. It is no different and no less maddening than corporate America, where the politically fluent often find themselves at the top of the food chain while those actually doing the legwork remain, like Boxer in Animal Farm, head down to the grindstone.
What has gone wrong in Jacksonville is that, yet again, at an absolutely critical juncture in franchise history, Khan has fallen into the understandable but foolish pursuit of a “sure thing” versus taking the time to select the right thing. Urban Meyer similarly positioned himself as a soothsayer for Lawrence, cockily stomping on NFL norms and assembling the roster like a circa-2000 Rivals.com recruiting listicle. Trent Baalke, who found himself in charge of personnel upon Meyer’s hiring, is no less innocent. Before that, amid uncertain footing, Khan thrust a septuagenarian two-time Super Bowl winner Tom Coughlin into the front office fold after Coughlin was elbowed out of his head coaching position with the New York Giants.
This kind of attitude made Doug Pederson, who came to Jacksonville riding his Super Bowl credentials from 2017 in Philadelphia, another perfect emergency off-ramp during a frantic coaching carousel in which Khan needed to save face and wipe the existence of Meyer from the record books. Pederson won a Super Bowl, so, of course he could figure out how to do it again.
A move like this is a painfully common tic for the NFL ownership circle. When billionaires are blessed with generationally talented players, they often panic and hire someone who has “been to the mountaintop.” The Dallas Cowboys did this with Mike McCarthy, who won a Super Bowl with the Green Bay Packers. The Denver Broncos are in the midst of doing the same with Sean Payton, who won a Super Bowl with the New Orleans Saints. Of course, it fails to recognize that the coach made it to the mountaintop at a certain place and time (and, most of the time, with the help of a generational quarterback). It’s like a failing record label hiring the Bee Gees to revamp its music division in 2024. Disco was great when disco was great. It could be great again. It’s not really all that great right now.
Anyone who has met a Super Bowl–winning or national championship-winning coach knows that the magic is in their ability to convince people that they have all the answers. And Khan, as much as anyone, has bunkered himself into a strange and twisted echo chamber of people who major in panache and are able to articulate some version of progress just on the horizon.
The truth is that Josh Hines-Allen is still the best player on this Jaguars roster, and has been since he was drafted in 2019 by Dave Caldwell. That regime made an AFC title game with Blake Bortles. This one cannot beat the spiraling Cleveland Browns at home in a rainstorm.
While coaches such as Sean McVay and Kyle Shanahan are rare, the league has seen no shortage of bright young minds who can connect with the modern quarterback, maximize players’ skills and foster a loose and enjoyable workplace. Shane Steichen came off a branch of the Frank Reich tree. Dave Canales came from the school of Pete Carroll. And while these coaches were getting hired, Khan was very likely in a room with his general manager hearing about just how good, just how talented and just how ready the Jaguars were to turn it all around. There are plenty of people out there who can save Lawrence; who can save the Jaguars. My guess is that they are simply not the ones promising Khan they can—or already have.
Perhaps the circulation of the quote will provide adequate motivation to pivot away from this destructive cycle of chasing what has already been accomplished somewhere else, long ago, and to focus on what needs to be accomplished now.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Jaguars Owner Shad Khan Is Perpetually Living in the Past.