Despite no experience as a head coach, Doug Pederson was hired to lead Calvary Baptist Academy’s football program in 2005. Of course, Pederson’s resume wasn’t exactly bare. He’d spent 10 seasons as an NFL quarterback and mentored players such as Brett Favre.
He put Calvary football on the map during his four seasons before the NFL came calling. He parlayed assistant coaching roles at Philadelphia and Kansas City into his first top job in the NFL – with the Eagles in 2016. In just his second season, Pederson led Philly to a Super Bowl championship.
After he spent 2021 out of football, Pederson was commanded to lead a disaster recovery project in Jacksonville in the wake of an Urban experiment gone very wrong.
Saturday, Pederson’s Jaguars, who earned the first pick in the 2022 NFL Draft, clinched the AFC South title to cap a remarkable turnaround in Duval County.
Although we’re nearly 20 years – and a massive two-level gap in the sport — removed from his time on Linwood Avenue, Pederson’s blueprint for success remains the same.
Trust and accountability.
Entering the 2021 NFL season, the Jaguars had compiled just one winning season in 12 years. Players and coaches longed for a savior. Urban Meyer, highly successful in the college game, was the choice.
The Jaguars only thought the prior decade-plus was a disaster.
The Meyer experiment was an epic failure. He was gone after just 13 games and a 2-11 record. And that doesn’t even begin to tell the story.
“Trust was broken with this team,” Pederson said. “This was not an overnight fix. We knew it was going to be a process, a journey. I had to earn their trust as a coach.
“You’re trying to teach a winning culture. You’re trying to flip a script. You’re not sure until you play games how that’s going to look. Now, they trust in me and I trust in them.”
Incredibly, Pederson began to sense something special was brewing during the Jaguars’ worst stretch of the season – a five-game losing streak following a 2-1 start.
“It could have gone sideways,” Pederson said.
Instead, the Jags’ effort didn’t change. The attitudes didn’t change. Pederson realized one portion of his mission was complete.
“They trust in me and I trust in them,” he said.
Jacksonville didn’t point fingers. It looked within.
“When we miss tackles, it’s us. When we miss field goals, it’s us. When we turn the ball over, that’s us,” Pederson said. “We realized we have a pretty good football team if we could just eliminate that.”
Jacksonville finished the regular season with five straight victories, including the winner-take-all affair against the Titans Saturday night.
“We’ve come so far,” Pederson said.
As a division champion, the Jaguars will host the Los Angeles Chargers in the Wild-Card round.
In his third season at Calvary, Pederson took the Cavaliers to the top of the Class 2A poll and the first of back-to-back state semifinal appearances. He went 13-3 in season No. 2 with the Eagles and corralled the Vince Lombardi Trophy.
Immediate success with Pederson at the helm isn’t a fluke, it’s a guarantee.
There are seven coaches in the league who compiled more wins than Pederson this season, but his argument for NFL Coach of the Year is strong. He didn’t just inherit the team with the worst record, he was tasked with a monumental rebuild. It took less than 12 months.
The job is far from finished, but the former national champion (1987) at Northeast Louisiana (now ULM) won’t have to pay for a meal in northeast Florida anytime soon.
“It’s just a step in the direction we want to go,” Pederson said. “I want this to be sustainable. You want to be competing for this division every year.”
Contact Roy at roylangiii@yahoo.com