Khan: Jags are done rebuilding
JACKSONVILLE — Driving away from Heinz Field on Oct. 8, his team having administered a 21-point win over the Pittsburgh Steelers, Jaguars owner Shad Khan had a similar feeling as those inside and around the organization.
This was not the usual Jaguars team. This was a team built to win now. This was going to be a fun season.
“That was the game,” Khan said Thursday afternoon in an interview with local writers in his EverBank Field suite.
That game moved the Jaguars to 3-2 on the season. They finished 10-6 and the AFC South champions. In the playoffs for the first time in 10 years, the Jaguars will host their first playoff game in 18 years Sunday against the Buffalo Bills.
Khan bought the team in 2012 and showed abnormal patience for an NFL owner through seasons of 14, 12, 13, 11 and 13 losses. He believed in the Jaguars’ buildthrough-the-draft philosophy. He stayed true to using free agency to supplement the roster, not dominate it. And he backed the front office’s confidence in quarterback Blake Bortles.
A year after bringing back former coach Tom Coughlin to head the football operations, retaining general manager Dave Caldwell (but giving Coughlin final say on the 53-man roster) and promoting Doug Marrone to coach, Khan is reveling in the Jaguars’ success … not that he is surprised.
“In August, when this seemed to be another hopeless season, blah, blah, blah, I told you guys, ‘We have everything to win now,’ ” Khan said. “And I felt that way.”
Khan feels this season is just the beginning of the Jaguars being a regular playoff participant.
“We’re not in a rebuilding mode,” he said. “We’ve done our rebuilding. If we aren’t winning, it’s [because of] something we haven’t done right.”
Khan’s decision to hire Coughlin and the organization’s decision to pick up Bortles’ 2018 contract option ($19 million guaranteed only for injury) were two of his biggest calls this year.
“Tom has been a very successful coach — this is a different stage for him,” Khan said. “Could he embrace it? It turned out better than certainly I thought it would and really the credit is to him. He never asked for [final say of ] the 53-man roster — that was my idea. I told Tom, ‘Maybe it’s not good for Dave’s ego, but there has to be somebody in charge and it needs to be you.’ ”
Coughlin, Caldwell and Marrone are all in the first season of three-year contracts.
Asked if he will visit extensions for the trio, Khan said: “I don’t think that is something I would be addressing at this point. This just happened a year ago.”
The Jaguars’ trio got right to work, signing veteran free agents Calais Campbell, A.J. Bouye and Barry Church and drafting Leonard Fournette.
Shortly after the draft, the Jaguars exercised Bortles’ option despite his 2016 regression.
“Maybe we’re not the biggest idiot on the football block,” Khan said. “When his option was picked up, it was like, ‘What are these guys smoking?’ But frankly, you have to stay the course yet be agile. The other thing with Blake — he’s a really nice guy. He’s from the area. He’s talented. He’s stayed healthy. We are invested. We want him to be successful.”