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ORLANDO, Fla. -- The Jacksonville Jaguars entered December among the teams competing to be the No. 1 seed in the AFC. Six weeks later they were out of the playoffs. Head coach Doug Pederson said he's never going to forget the sting of that 1-5 stretch to end the season. Not only is it motivating him this offseason -- and he's hoping the same for his players -- it also has been a major factor in how the Jaguars shape their offseason. "I don't know if I'll ever get over it," he said Monday at the NFL owners meetings. "I think for me it's going to be my motivation, my fuel moving forward and I'm not going to let it cloud the vision, but at the same time it's going to be close in my mind as I move forward with the team this spring." The Jaguars won in Houston on Nov. 26 to improve to 8-3. They were tied with Miami and Kansas City for the second-best record in the AFC, a half-game behind Baltimore (9-3). With a game against a Joe Burrow-less Cincinnati and a fresh-off-the-couch Joe Flacco and Cleveland before a home game against the Ravens, there was talk in the city of the playoffs potentially having to run through Jacksonville. However, the Jaguars won only one more game (beating Carolina at home) and the season ended after a Week 18 loss in Tennessee in a game the Jaguars needed to win to make the postseason. Pederson and general manager Trent Baalke have approached the offseason with a plan to ensure that the way those six weeks unfolded -- injuries to key offensive players (including quarterback Trevor Lawrence) and defensive miscommunications, blown assignments and breakdowns -- doesn't happen again. So they prioritized adding players with significant playoff experience as well as players with a track record of being good leaders, the latter being an important addition to a locker room that may have gotten overconfident at times in 2023 after their success in 2022. Six of the eight free agents the Jaguars signed came from teams that made deep playoff runs over the past four seasons, including two that played in the AFC title game (cornerback Ronald Darby and receiver/returner Devin Duvernay) and one that played in the NFC title game and Super Bowl last season (defensive lineman Arik Armstead). Three -- center Mitch Morse, receiver Gabe Davis and Armstead -- are also former team captains and Armstead is a four-time Walter Payton Man of the Year nominee. "I guess now we're going back to the hunter [in the AFC South] again, right?" Pederson said. "But this is the culture that I want to establish in Jacksonville and this is the reason why you go get guys like Mitch Morse and Arik Armstead and the Darnell Savages and guys that have been to the postseason. These guys have been captains on their teams and they've been to Super Bowls, they've been to AFC Championship Games, so these guys know how to win and that's kind of the influx of talent that we want to bring onto [our roster]. Guys who have been there, done that. "Again, I've got to continue to message the team in the right way and there's got to be a sort of confidence about you that when you take the field on game day, there's going to be games you're going to get beat, I understand that. But you've got to have that confidence and that swagger that you're going to get the job done on game day. I think bringing in some of these free agents we did this spring are going to help that." Pederson admitted that his team may have gotten too comfortable after its 8-3 start and that hurt the Jaguars in December and January. Linebacker Josh Allen's comment after the Week 18 loss to the Titans -- everyone was waiting around for a spark to start a surge and it never came -- seems to bear that out. "I believe you can definitely get comfortable," Pederson said. "You can kind of believe and read into the hype that's surrounding your football team. That's the one thing that can't happen. You've got to guard against that obviously, and that's something that I think our team is going to realize moving forward. "It's just a matter of staying positive and staying forward-focused, forward thinking. You hate to live in the past but I think you can remember the past. I think it's fuel moving forward, it's kind of our motivation as we go."
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