Just days removed from the start of the 2022 regular season, the Jacksonville Jaguars have spent this week lavishing each other with praise for their hard work put in during training camp and the preseason. The adulation has now extended past the players, with head coach Doug Pederson getting a rave review from offensive guard Brandon Scherff in the team’s Monday press conference.
Asked for his evaluation of Pederson’s first months at the helm of the Jaguars’ organization, Scherff told the media that he has complete faith in his coach, and praised his ability to steer the ship through Jacksonville’s rebuild.
“He’s a great head coach,” Scherff said. “He’s played in the league, so he knows what players go through, so whether you need a taper or a practice down, he’s going to put you in shells, but it’s all fundamentals then, and speed. He knows how to take care of a player. He leads by example, and we all love him as a head coach. He’s a heck of a leader for us.”
Leadership will be a key theme in the Jaguars’ 2022 campaign and should be a defining factor for the team’s hopes of becoming competitive moving forward. They’ll need a coach who has experience revitalizing a franchise from the ground up, and Pederson certainly fits the bill to that end after delivering a Super Bowl championship to the Philadelphia Eagles in 2017.
He was a primary reason that the Eagles were able to go from a 7-9 record in 2016 to a Super Bowl win in 2017 with Carson Wentz and Nick Foles under center. Though the Jaguars’ rebuild is set to be a more arduous undertaking, Scherff’s comments on Monday should reassure fans about the direction their team is headed, and serve as a barometer for Jacksonville’s faith in the new regime to deliver on their promise of leading the Jaguars to contention in the very near future.