The Jacksonville Jaguars wasted little time in making a big move after their dreadful 2024 season came to an end, as they fired coach Doug Pederson on Monday morning, just hours after their Week 18 loss to the Indianapolis Colts.
The Jaguars had high hopes that Pederson, who led the Eagles to a Super Bowl title in 2018, would be able to turn quarterback Trevor Lawrence into a star and make the franchise perennial contenders. Instead, Pederson was able to win just one playoff game during his three years and was shown the door after the Jaguars finished 3-14 this season.
While the firing wasn't much of a surprise, former NFL running back LeSean McCoy took issue with it and called out Lawrence for not being a good quarterback. During FS1's The Facility on Monday, McCoy blasted Lawrence and took issue with teams firing coaches because of mediocre quarterbacks.
“If you look at his whole path, he’s actually one of the coordinators that coached for the Chiefs that actually called plays,” McCoy said. “He does that well, then he goes to Philadelphia. What’s he do there? He wins a championship. They don’t win it with Carson Wentz; it was with Nick Foles…. And then he goes to Jacksonville, they say, ‘We need somebody to save our quarterback because he’s really not that good, but we took him No. 1 pick overall, so we got to do something about it.’ "
“You bring him in there, he helps Trevor Lawrence out, but how much can you help a guy that’s not that good? And then you pay these quarterbacks, give them all this money, and when they don’t do well because they’re not that good of a player, and now you gotta blame somebody. Who do you blame? Let’s blame the head coach. But you’re going to blame a winning head coach that’s been winning his whole life. It don’t make sense.”
Here are McCoy's full comments:
Jaguars fire head coach Doug Pederson; @CutonDime25 is not happy:
— The Facility (@TheFacilityFS1) January 6, 2025
“The league is confused right now. Doug Pederson is a winning coach...It doesn’t matter what coach you bring in for Trevor Lawrence.” pic.twitter.com/jIWFMUcmSc
The Jaguars are hoping their next coach will be able to take Lawrence to the next level. If not, there could be a lot more bad years for a franchise that has struggled to put together winning seasons.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Former NFL Star Trashes Trevor Lawrence Over Jaguars Firing Doug Pederson.
