As the ball bounced off the midsection of Cowboys receiver Noah Brown and back into the waiting arms of Rayshawn Jenkins, the Jaguars’ safety covered the remaining 52 yards of grass in front of him for a game-winning pick-six. His first-year coach, Doug Pederson, really didn’t have to think twice.
As Pederson’s Jaguars players spilled onto the field, he went with them. As they piled on each other, he threw his headset in the air. And as they left the field, he gestured to the TIAA Bank Field crowd to get louder, waving his arms up and down energetically. The 54-year-old wasn’t just letting loose. He was making a of letting loose.
His Jaguars had just come back from a 17-point deficit to vanquish the mighty Cowboys, 40–34, in overtime. His young quarterback had a banner day. Jenkins made the biggest play of all the big plays. The offense came together in the second half. The defense tightened up when it needed to most. But this runaway train of emotion from Pederson was about way more than that.
“You know, Albert, the year off made me think about a lot of things,” Pederson said a couple of hours later on his drive home. “And one of them was to enjoy the moment, to enjoy it with your team, and really let your personality show and express your excitement and joy. [Today was] a great way to do it. Our team has battled a lot of adversity this year, and for us to beat Dallas? They’re a great football team, don't get me wrong. Well-coached team.
“But for us to do that, and the way we did it, the way we came back in that football game, my hat’s off to our players, the staff. So yeah, I’m gonna let loose just a little bit.”
Go nuts, Doug. On Halloween, the Jaguars were 2–6. The players who’d been around since the start of 2020 were 6–35 over that two-and-a-half-season stretch and on their third coach (the fourth one, if you count Darrell Bevell’s interim run last year), having endured the surreal nightmare of the single-season Urban Meyer era. They had scars, for sure. But they also were following Pederson, after all they’d been through, and even when the wins weren’t coming.
It has paid off with four wins in six games, a 6–8 record and control of their own destiny in the AFC South—if the Jags win out, they win the division.
Oh, and they’ve got a quarterback with the potential to get them in the conversation with any of the others in the AFC, who’s blossoming in his second year with a promising young core around him. So, yeah, there’s a lot to be excited about in Duval.
And you can excuse the coach if he’s gonna let his excitement show.
