Byron Leftwich apparently wasn’t the only Tampa Bay Buccaneers assistant coach the Jacksonville Jaguars had an eye on. Shortly after Leftwich withdrew from consideration for the Jaguars head coach vacancy, the team announced Doug Pederson as their new head coach, the former Philadelphia Eagles coach returning to the NFL after a one-year hiatus. And as Pederson works to finalize his staff, he’s reached into the Buccaneers organization and is reportedly working to come to terms with Mike Caldwell, their inside linebackers coach, for the role of Jaguars defensive coordinator — per Mike Garafolo of NFL Network.
If the deal can be made official, it will be a reunion for Pederson and Caldwell, the latter being both an ex-teammate of the former and a linebackers coach under Pederson in Philadelphia. Much of his coaching experience came by way of the Eagles, who he began his coaching career with as a defensive quality control coach in 2008. He’d take his talents to the Arizona Cardinals in 2013 and then the New York Jets, where he was also named assistant head coach before landing with the Buccaneers as ILBs coach in 2018.
This will mark the first time in his career as a coach that he’s been tasked with coordinating an entire defense, but Pederson is obviously confident enough to add him to a Jaguars staff desperately in need of changing the entire culture in Jacksonville. To do so, it’s paramount that, like Pederson, Caldwell hits the ground running in 2022.
