Trent Baalke is gone but the Jaguars' biggest issue remains

It finally happened. After literal years of Shad Khan ignoring fan pleas for him to rid the team of Trent Baalke, the Jacksonville Jaguars owner finally broke free from his general manager's Svengali-like hold over him, and made the difficult decision to part ways. Well, it was a difficult decision for Khan, anyway.

So what in the wide world of sports took so long?

There are just over a million residents in Duval County. When Khan made the bewildering decision to keep Baalke while letting Doug Pederson go, approximately 999,999 of Duval's residents knew he was making a confounding mistake, and were screaming from the bridges to let the Jaguars owner know.

Even perennial Pollyanna sports talk host/play-by-play voice of the team Frank Frangie was shaken when the second head coaching candidate, Liam Coen, pulled his name from consideration in favor of returning to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as an assistant.

"This morning's news rattled me... I was really excited about Liam Coen. I think he might be the next McVay. I don't know people in Detroit. I know media people in Tampa... So, I asked around. I know people in Tampa, and here was the concern as it related to Trent Baalke. It's not that people think Trent's a bad evaluator of talent. It's not that they think he's the worst GM. But, it rattles people the way he outlives coaches."

Frank Frangie

Below is the full clip where Frangie shares how he felt about the Baalke debacle.

Frangie is right in so far as Baalke surviving Pederson was a huge red flag. The thing is, everyone already knew that was the knock on Trent Baalke. How it's possible that nearly every Jaguar fan knew of Baalke's league-wide perception as a "coach killer," but his employer and owner didn't, defies explanation. But, here we are.

Pederson was just the latest victim of Baalke's reign of terror on NFL head coaches. But, one of the problems with Shad Khan is that he doesn't hear any of that. He apparently doesn't spend much time in Jacksonville, and as such is tone-deaf to the feelings of the fans. He is seemingly unaware of owning the most futile franchise across all major sports in America and thought a coaching change was all that was required.

It took having two of Khan's top coaching candidates telling him, "Thanks but no thanks," for him to finally... FINALLY wake up and realize his general manager is a problem. Why is Shad so clueless? Is it a lack of judgment? Is he disengaged? Is he just not "into" this whole being an NFL owner thing? No one really knows.

But, what the fans do know now, to an embarrassing degree, is that the dysfunction at Everbank Stadium starts at the top.

And therein lies the big problem. When a fan decides to invest his time, money and emotion into a sports franchise, they may not realize it, but what they are really rooting for is an organization. Quarterbacks, head coaches, shooting guards and pitchers come and go over time, but as noted here, some organizations are generally good, and some organizations are generally bad.

The Jaguars are a bad one, and while the departure of Doug Pederson and Trent Baalke at least opens the door for improvement when the top decision-maker in an organization displays poor decision-making time and time again, it tends to means the arrow will remain down over the long haul.

Here are some of Shad Khan's greatest hits as the top Jaguar:

By all accounts, Shad Khan is a good guy, a smart businessman, and an overall classy dude. But, his judgment as an owner is indescribably awful, and there is little reason to believe he will suddenly reverse that trend and make good hires moving forward.

The Jaguars faithful are down to hoping Khan can just get lucky and fall into a good hire, which, at least now is possible with the departure of Baalke. But, history says don't count on it.

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