Doug Marrone hire gets a ‘C-minus’ from Sports Illustrated
By Daniel Lago
Most fans were underwhelmed by the promotion of interim head coach Doug Marrone to the full time gig, and so was most of the national media.
The Jacksonville Jaguars had a roller coaster of a Monday news-wise, angering fans with the hiring of Doug Marrone as the full time head coach and subsequently quelling some of the vitriol by announcing Tom Coughlin as the new executive vice president of football operations.
More from Jacksonville Jaguars News
- Jacksonville Jaguars should welcome Derrick Henry into the kingdom
- Jaguars Rumors: Trent Baalke seems to be getting respect now
- Jaguars News: This division rival might be making a big move
- Former Jacksonville Jaguars S Johnathan Cyprien: “New Profession, Same Standards”
- Jacksonville Jaguars TE Evan Engram officially gets the franchise tag: 3 takeaways
There are still a lot of questions left to answer in terms of power structure and coaching staff, but it’s worth analyzing the hire of Marrone in a vacuum. By most accounts, Marrone is a very good head coach who got the Syracuse football program and the Buffalo Bills going in the right direction. He left a bad taste in peoples’ mouths with his abrupt departure from Buffalo, but in retrospect it appears he made the right decision.
Chris Burke over at Sports Illustrated discussed the hiring in some detail, including a grade that indicates he isn’t too impressed.
"Grade: C-minus. The Jaguars don’t have to look far to see how the interim-to-permanent coach transition can work; the Titans did the same with Mike Mularkey, then just missed out on an AFC South title this season.Still, the way this all looks—Marrone’s fate likely resting in the hands of Bortles, with Coughlin in the background—points toward 2017 perhaps being a brief trial run under this structure. If Bortles bottoms out again or the Jaguars stumble toward another three-, four- or five-win finish, there would be even less justification for maintaining the status quo (or some semblance of it) than there is now.Can Coughlin come to the rescue in the front office? Will he have to save the day on the sideline? He is the X-factor in what otherwise would be a very mundane hire."
I think Marrone himself is a ‘B’ hire. The optics of the situation and the lack of transparency with the coaching search does knock it down to a middling ‘C’ grade though.