JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The Jaguars are making a long-overdue change at general manager with the team firing Trent Baalke on Wednesday afternoon.
In a statement, owner Shad Khan said the decision was made to mutually part ways with Baalke, who was retained after the team fired head coach Doug Pederson on Jan. 6. Ethan Waugh will serve as the interim general manager.
“Following several discussions with Trent Baalke this week, we both arrived at the conclusion that it is in our mutual best interests to respectfully separate, effective immediately. Trent leaves us with my deepest appreciation for his efforts over the past five seasons. Ethan Waugh will serve as interim general manager and play an important role, with others, as we continue the process of interviewing candidates to serve as our new head coach. I am deeply committed to building a winner here in Jacksonville and look forward to introducing a new head coach who will make that happen for our players and fans alike,” Khan said in a statement.
Watch News4JAGs reaction to Baalke’s firing below:
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The decision to retain Baalke after the season ended has reportedly been an issue with the Jaguars being able to bring in a head coach. Khan said after he fired Pederson that if a candidate said that keeping Baalke was a hangup, he would explore a change at GM. That didn’t happen quick enough to land three of the top candidates in this coaching cycle.
Ben Johnson picked the Bears over Jacksonville because he reportedly liked the structure in Chicago better. Rumored frontrunner Liam Coen opted to return to Tampa Bay rather than the Jaguars, a move seen largely as the final straw for Khan to make a move. Another candidate, Lions defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn, is being hired as the Jets new head coach.
The Jaguars finished 4-13, despite Khan saying before the season that this was the best team ever assembled. Baalke had a woeful free agent class that included whiffs like Arik Armstead, Gabe Davis and Ronald Darby. His draft classes had been hit and miss. The team handed out huge money contract extensions last offseason to Trevor Lawrence, cornerback Tyson Campbell and edge Josh Hines-Allen. All three underwhelmed for varying reasons, but those deals were done by Baalke.
Baalke was never well liked in Jacksonville. He was hired as the director of player personnel in 2020, and was made interim GM when the team fired Dave Caldwell during that 1-15 season that remains the franchise’s worst. Khan promoted Baalke to GM in 2021 to work alongside head coach Urban Meyer. By the end of that disastrous season, the fanbase was seething about how bad Meyer was. Baalke, by association, was lumped into that angst, and fans tried to stage a clown game in the regular season finale to show their disapproval of both Baalke and Khan by donning red clown noses.
Khan hung on to Baalke and hired Pederson in February 2022, and the duo had a remarkable finish to their first season together. Jacksonville won seven of its final nine games and reached the playoffs as the AFC South champ. That success carried over in an 8-3 start in 2023, but the Jaguars imploded and missed the playoffs. Despite the most expensive roster in franchise history, Jacksonville never got on track. It was expected that the Jaguars would clean house after the season ended, but Khan made the mistake of keeping Baalke. It’s a decision that looks even worse now, especially as three of the top head coaching candidates this cycle are off the board.