Jaguars owner Shad Khan made a significant commitment to Jacksonville. Now, he expects his team to make a significant improvement after consecutive 9-8 seasons.
In behind-the-scenes footage from this week’s edition of The Hunt, the team’s internal content series, Khan was unmistakably clear in a training-camp message to his team.
“About a month ago we celebrated the city’s partnership with the Jaguars and the approval of funding for the new stadium of the future,” Khan said, as reported by NFL.com’s Grant Gordon. “So, I met with the reporters and the discussion obviously quickly turned to football and I was quoted, ‘For us, winning now is the expectation.’ So really I’ve been looking forward to tonight to set the record straight. I was not misquoted. And let me just repeat, winning now is the expectation.”
Head coach Doug Pederson led the team to a remarkable finish in 2022, capturing the AFC South and a Wild Card win over the Chargers before losing to eventual Super Bowl champion Kansas City. For a team that had won nine-or-more games only once over the prior 14 seasons, it was a much-needed renaissance after a disastrous college-to-NFL jump for Urban Meyer.
Year 2, however, was an organizational failure. Last season, Jacksonville squandered a 6-2 start by losing six of its final nine, including a Week 18 collapse against Tennessee that kept the Jaguars home for the postseason.
Pederson, quarterback Trevor Lawrence and the Jaguars kick off their future-is-now season Sept. 8 at Miami (1 p.m. ET, CBS).