3 Observations on Mike McCoy Reportedly Joining Doug Pederson's Jaguars Staff
We are starting to see exactly how Doug Pederson's first staff with the Jacksonville Jaguars is taking shape.
Pederson has made it clear how confident he is in building a staff around him in Jacksonville that can develop and relate with the roster, pushing them closer and closer to being a winning team.
Pederson has begun to make additions to the coaching staff piece by piece, but what does each hire mean for the team moving forward? In an effort to put each new addition in context, we are going to go through some of the most important and high-profile hires to give an idea of what to expect from Pederson's staff.
First up: Mike McCoy, who NFL Network reported on Monday night would be the Jaguars' quarterbacks coach.
What does the addition of McCoy mean moving forward? We break it down below.
Pederson is building his coaching staff similar to how he did with the Eagles, targeting former quarterbacks
If there is any popular trait from Doug Pederson coaching staffs, it is the quarterback position. From Frank Reich to John DeFilippo to Press Taylor, Pederson has frequently hired former quarterbacks to work closely with his team's own quarterback and offense. With Pederson as a former quarterback himself, the trio of him, the offensive coordinator and quarterback coach all being former quarterbacks makes a potentially invaluable resource for Trevor Lawrence.
This strategy worked wonders for several years with the Eagles and it appears Pederson is going right back to that well with the Jaguars. McCoy started at Utah in college and bounced around both the NFL and CFL as a quarterback. He knows the position because he has been a quarterback himself. Pederson has valued this in the past and it appears it will become another key aspect of his philosophy when it comes to developing Lawrence.
McCoy gives Pederson a former head coach who can act as a sounding board
One thing the Jaguars' coaching staff lacked last year was head coach experience. Urban Meyer was a first-year head coach, Darrell Bevell had only ever been an interim head coach, Charlie Strong was only a head coach at the college level, and Joe Cullen was in his first year as anything other than a position coach. It doesn't take several former head coaches to have an effective coaching staff, but the lack of experience on the staff did show up as Meyer made rookie mistake after rookie mistake.
It doesn't appear Pederson will have that issue with his first Jaguars staff, however. Pederson himself already knows what being a head coach entails due to his five years with the Eagles, but having even more voices on the coaching staff who can serve as a sounding board for Pederson and other ideas is significant. McCoy will be able to relate to Pederson and his message as a former head coach himself, which should only enhance the collaboration between Pederson and his staff.
Does McCoy's time away from the NFL actually matter in the grand scheme?
McCoy is clearly a qualified assistant due to his time as a quarterback coach with the Panthers and Jake Delhomme from 2004-2008 and his work with Denver's quarterbacks from 2009-2012. Philip Rivers also had some of the most productive years of his career with McCoy as his coach, so there isn't much to dispute about him as a positon coach. The Jaguars aren't hiring him to be head coach or to even call plays, after all.
But McCoy hasn't held an NFL job since the Arizona Cardinals fired him after just seven games in 2018 -- the second consecutive year in which he was fired in-season after he was fired in Denver after 10 games in 2017. Since then, McCoy has had interviews in the NFL with the Jaguars and Panthers as an offensive coordinator candidate, but the last three seasons saw McCoy away from the NFL sidelines.
So, does that serve as a potential worry or red flag when it comes to McCoy? It depends on how you look at it. The NFL has changed some even in the last three years, but McCoy's knowledge of the quarterback position and developing said quarterbacks goes far beyond that. But it does call into question why McCoy wasn't in any other assistant role the last three seasons. Whether it was by design or not is unknown, but Pederson will have to be confident that McCoy is able to continue to re-invent himself as he is at Lawrence's side.
