If there is one thing fans already know about the Jacksonville Jaguars it’s the fact that the team has more than enough critics. However, NFL Network’s Mike Silver is one of the few who believes in what the Khans are building — at least in the distant future.
The veteran writer joined Jags senior writer John Oehser for his latest episode of the “O-Zone Podcast” to discuss the Jags’ outlook. Unlike many of his other comrades in the field, Silver praised the Jags’ leaders in Shad and Tony Khan as the two have made some drastic personnel changes since 2019.
“I’m a big fan of what the Khans have done,” Silver told Oehser, later adding that the Khans are committed to winning.
“I know the Khans want to win and want to do it the right way, and I know their instincts are good,” Silver said. “I know they’ve made a lot of decisions for the right reasons. I think like any new owners in the NFL, sometimes they make decisions they think are right and say, ‘OK, maybe they’re not.'”
The Jags will look drastically different than the one fans watched in 2019 (on and off the field). They got rid of executive Tom Coughlin before the season could end after the NFLPA singled them out for the treatment of certain players. Afterward in the offseason, they released nose tackle Marcell Dareus, then traded veterans Calais Campbell, Nick Foles and A.J Bouye. Each move had its critics, but losing the aforementioned players made fans especially concerned about the teams management.
While many will disagree with Silver, he is one of the journalists who has followed the Jags closely over time and has covered the league for three decades. That being said, he’s seen more than enough football to form such an opinion of the Khans.
When going into details about some of the positives to take from 2019, Silver pointed out the Jags comeback victory against the Oakland Raiders, another team he watches closely.
“People looking at it from afar may not have appreciated how important those last few games were,” Silver said […] “Beating the Raiders in Oakland was not a small thing. That was a huge, huge, huge game thing for the Oakland Raiders. They really, really wanted that for the fans they were abandoning. It meant a lot to the coach and to the players.
“That was a pretty impressive thing for them [the Jaguars] to do, and then to win again at the end and to have Minshew look good […] They came out of that saying, ‘You know what? Maybe we have something to build around here.'”
Even dating back to general manager Dave Caldwell’s and coach Doug Marrone’s first offseason presser, it felt like the Jags thought there was something in Minshew as Silver stated. They stuck to the plan to build around him throughout the offseason, and in a matter of months, they will get to see if he’s the franchise’s guy (if there is football). If so, the Jags can get trending in the right direction and the Khans will be well off to proving their doubters wrong.