Jacksonville Jaguars working to 'strengthen' football operations staff around GM Trent Baalke

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The Jacksonville Jaguars have a new head coach and soon they're going to have a new front-office structure.

Owner Shad Khan said Saturday that the plan is to hire an executive vice president of football operations as well as add someone to work under current general manager Trent Baalke. It's a structure Khan has used before but dumped after the 2019 season and it helped the Jaguars post their only winning season in Khan's 10 years as owner.

«One of the reasons we had the search was not only looking for the head coaching candidate but really to learn about other organizations,» Khan said during the news conference welcoming new head coach Doug Pederson. «That's a by-product of the coaching search. So some of the practices, some of the structure that works, we got great insight into it. Strengthening the football operations, more staff, that's part of our goal. We've had too flat an organization and we want to add brainpower and more people to strengthen that.»

Khan said the team has notified the NFL they plan on adding an EVP. The Jaguars have already interviewed former Minnesota GM Rick Spielman, though Khan didn't say for which position, but they have to interview at least two external minority candidates per the recent expansion of the Rooney Rule.

Khan hired Tom Coughlin as an EVP and gave him total control of all football decisions in January 2017, and one of Coughlin's first decisions was to retain interim head coach Doug Marrone. The pairing worked that season because the Jaguars went 10-6, won the AFC South for the first time, played host to a playoff game for the first time since January 2000, and made a run to the AFC Championship game before losing at New England.

However, Coughlin ran