JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Shad Khan has been a hands-off owner since he agreed to purchase the Jacksonville Jaguars from Wayne and Delores Weaver in November 2011.
He had no experience in the NFL, nor as an owner of a professional sports team, and smartly decided to allow the experienced people he hired to do their jobs without meddling.
Khan maintained that approach for the next nine years. The result? His franchise has gone 41-106, and he tied former New Orleans Saints owner John Mecom Jr. as the second-fastest owner to reach 100 losses. Both reached that mark in 141 games, one more than former Tampa Bay owner Hugh Culverhouse (140).
So it’s beyond time for Khan to get more involved. He took a step in that direction by firing general manager Dave Caldwell on Nov. 29 and coach Doug Marrone on Monday.
Khan, 70, has not ignored the Jaguars and is involved behind the scenes, but the franchise needs him to be out front and heavily involved.
Does he need to be at the stadium every day? Should he have daily check-ins with his GM and/or other football management? Does he need to watch film, sit in on scouting meetings or ask for the game plan? No. However, Khan should be a more regular visitor to the stadium.
He should make his voice heard more frequently in every aspect of the organization, from marketing to ticketing to nutrition. He should educate himself more on how successful owners operate. Demand more and hold people more accountable. He should be heavily involved in the coaching search and make the final call.
He doesn’t need to take Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones’ approach in regard to being intimately involved in every aspect of the franchise, but he does need to inject a feeling of “this isn’t good enough” throughout the building.
None of that will be easy for Khan because he has so many other projects that demand his attention in addition to his primary business, Flex-N-Gate, which manufactures metal and plastic equipment and mechanical assemblies for the automobile industry.
But for Khan to truly turn one of the NFL’s worst franchises into a consistent winner, he needs to somehow find the time.
Khan’s hands-off approach — as well as the fact that he decided to retain Marrone and Caldwell for 2020 despite his statement after the 2018 season that losing will not be tolerated — has raised questions about where the Jaguars rank on Khan’s priority list. He also owns the London soccer club Fulham FC, which he bought in 2013 and which just made its return to the Premier League. He is co-owner of All Elite Wrestling and is a majority investor in the Black News Channel.
Khan, who splits time between homes in Chicago and Naples, Florida, also owns the Four Seasons hotel in Toronto and the Urbana (Illinois) Country Club. He also is spearheading the push for the $450 million Lot J development project in Jacksonville, a 50-50 partnership between the Jaguars and The Cordish Companies to develop the area around TIAA Bank Field with residential areas, a hotel, bars, restaurants and entertainment areas.
Khan also struck a deal with the NFL to play an annual game in London starting with the 2013 season. The team was going to play two games there in 2020 before the pandemic canceled overseas travel, and Khan has said he wants to sign a new deal for the Jaguars to play at least one home game in the U.K. every year. Khan also tried to purchase Wembley Stadium in 2018, though the deal fell through.
It’s not against the Jaguars’ interests to be involved in those projects, and Flex-N-Gate should be Khan’s top priority. But the Jaguars have to get moved higher on the list, especially because the people he has hired to oversee the franchise’s on-field success have, with the exception of one lone season with an AFC South championship in 2017, failed to deliver.
Would Khan — who had a personal net worth of $8 billion as of July 2020, according to Forbes — tolerate a manager overseeing a department in which sales either stagnated or got worse in eight of nine years? Wouldn’t he take action? The Jaguars should be no different.
Khan liked former coach Gus Bradley and wanted his approach to work, but the Jaguars were 14-48 under Bradley in 2013-16 and Khan was finally left with little choice. Khan could have become more involved at that point, but he instead chose to bring back Tom Coughlin as the executive vice president of football operations and give him final say on all football matters.
At first, that seemed like a sound football decision because the Jaguars advanced to the conference title game in 2017, the first season with Marrone coaching and Coughlin calling the shots. However, Coughlin’s heavy-handed approach, especially when it came to blatantly ignoring the collectively bargained fine system for his own, created such a toxic atmosphere that Khan was forced to fire Coughlin in December 2019.
Khan declined to make significant changes, though. He retained Marrone and Caldwell — issuing essentially the same losing-must-stop statement that he did after the 2018 season — and gave the mandate to clean up the salary cap and the locker room culture.
Khan has had nine years to observe and learn, to study how successful owners operate and to realize something has to change at the top.
With the exception of 2017, nothing this organization has done during his tenure has been good enough.
It’s time for him to stop trusting that the right decisions will be made. It’s time for him to become more involved and make sure they are made.