You ever been inside one of those funhouses at a carnival? You walk in there, there's music playing, you're a little lost, and at some point you come across a mirror. Only this mirror doesn't reflect back your typical perfect mirror image. Because the mirrors are curved, the image it reflects back is vaguely similar, but distorted.
I say all of this because the 2023 Jacksonville Jaguars season was essentially the funhouse mirror version of the 2022 Jacksonville Jaguars season. Each of these two seasons, the Jags finished with a 9-8 record, only they got to that point in completely different ways. In 2022, the Jaguars started the season 4-8 under 1st-year head coach Doug Pederson, but climbed out of that hole, won five straight games to end the season, and wound up winning the AFC South Division and advancing to the Divisional Round of the NFL Playoffs. In 2023, the Jaguars started 8-4, but collapsed down the stretch, finished 9-8, but this time, missed out on the postseason.
See, just like a funhouse mirror.
So after such a startling collapse that culminated with a Week 18 loss to the lowly Tennessee Titans, Doug Pederson and the Jaguars now have to rebuild in hopes that they can escape from the funhouse and return back to the top of the AFC South.
“I don't know if I'll ever get over it,” Pederson said while speaking with reporters at the NFL owners meetings on Monday, per Michael DiRocco of ESPN.com. “I think for me it's going to be my motivation, my fuel moving forward and I'm not going to let it cloud the vision, but at the same time it's going to be close in my mind as I move forward with the team this spring.”
Turning a collapse like this one into fuel and motivation is all fine and good. It's the proper attitude one should adopt whenever they face a setback, no matter what area of life the setback comes from. And to be clear, this is a big part of the reason why the Jaguars hired Doug Pederson before the 2022 season began in the first place. Someone who could keep a steady demeanor in a time like this one, as opposed to Urban Meyer — Pederson's predecessor in Jacksonville — who was an unmitigated disaster in basically every situation, is what this franchise needed. But it's not the only thing the franchise needed.
“I've got to continue to message the team in the right way and there's got to be a sort of confidence about you that when you take the field on game day, there's going to be games you're going to get beat, I understand that. But you've got to have that confidence and that swagger that you're going to get the job done on game day. I think bringing in some of these free agents we did this spring are going to help that.”
Jacksonville's Newest Additions
DiRocco writes that the Jacksonville Jaguars, “prioritized adding players with significant playoff experience as well as players with a track record of being good leaders, the latter being an important addition to a locker room that may have gotten overconfident at times in 2023 after their success in 2022.” Doug Pederson had the same thing to say.
“This is the culture that I want to establish in Jacksonville and this is the reason why you go get guys like Mitch Morse and Arik Armstead and the Darnell Savages and guys that have been to the postseason. These guys have been captains on their teams and they've been to Super Bowls, they've been to AFC Championship Games, so these guys know how to win and that's kind of the influx of talent that we want to bring onto [our roster]. Guys who have been there, done that.”
Consider the additions Gabe Davis, Ronald Darby, and Devin Duvernay, and we've basically covered the extent of the Jaguars activity so far this offseason, and that's proof that Jacksonville GM Trent Baalke is literally putting his money where Doug Pederson's mouth is. And because of that, the Jaguars could soon be contenders in the AFC South once again.
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