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“Black Monday” axes fell in Jacksonville, Florida, and — a tad early in — New England, while a sword of unemployment dangled in Dallas, leaving at least five NFL teams looking for new head coaches.
The Jacksonville Jaguars sacked Super Bowl-winning coach Doug Pederson on Monday in the NFL’s dark annual ritual of finding fall guys after the regular season came to an end Sunday night.
The New England Patriots jumped the Black Monday gun, axing Mayo, their rookie head coach, on Sunday, moments after they completed their 4-13 campaign.
It wasn’t immediately clear by late Monday afternoon whether the Dallas Cowboys would part ways with Mike McCarthy after their disappointing 7-10 season.
The New York Jets, the Chicago Bears and the New Orleans Saints were already operating with interim coaches and are expected to start searching for permanent replacements this week.
“This whole situation is on me,” Patriots owner Robert Kraft told reporters Monday, explaining Mayo’s termination. “I feel terrible for Jerod, because I put him in an untenable situation. I know he has all the tools as a head coach to be successful in this league. He just needed more time before taking the job.”
Pederson ended his three-year Jacksonville tenure with a disastrous 4-13 season after having gone 9-8 in both 2022 and 2023.
It has been a long fall from grace for Pederson, once the wunderkind field general who led the Philadelphia Eagles to the 2018 Super Bowl title.
He’ll always be credited for calling the “Philly Special,” a fourth-and-goal trick play that paid off in Philadelphia’s Super Bowl win over the Patriots.
Jags owner Shad Khan kept GM Trent Baalke and explained his choice to can Peterson: “It’s where we need the most change is really on the coaching side, and that’s where we’re starting.”
“As the season progressed, obviously we weren’t doing well. We were close, like yesterday (a 26-23 overtime loss to Indianapolis) but not close enough to win the game,” Khan said Monday. “I just came to the conclusion what we were doing was not working, a change in direction was needed.”
The 4-13 Las Vegas Raiders appear to be sticking with coach Antonio Pierce, who spoke Monday at length about offseason plans and keeping his staff intact. He’s still the head coach of the Silver & Black.
“I haven’t been told anything different,” said Pierce, 46, who thanked players and fans for their support.
He said he understood the task before him.
“We’ve got to win more games, and that’s what everybody expects,” Pierce said.
The Cowboys’ spot was still in question through late Monday afternoon. McCarthy is 49-35 at the Dallas helm. But the franchise that calls itself “America’s Team” has won just one playoff game in his five years in charge.
The Cowboys remain one of the most talked-about and watched teams despite a 29-season-long Super Bowl-winning drought. Dallas last won it all on Jan. 28, 1996, in the middle of Bill Clinton’s two-term White House stay.
McCarthy’s contact, technically, doesn’t run out until Jan. 14, and the Cowboys have a history of not acting immediately on coaching terminations.
McCarthy’s predecessor, Jason Garrett, coached his last game for Dallas on Dec. 29, 2019, but wasn’t formally let go until Jan. 5, 2020.
If McCarthy is sacked — but not soon— then teams with openings might hire other candidates and he could be frozen out of 2025 jobs.
The New York Giants took themselves out of the Black Monday carousel, announcing that coach Brian Daboll would stay for his fourth season — though he appears to already be on a short leash for 2025.
The Giants went 3-14 this season, and Daboll’s three-season record is 18-32-1 (.363). The team set a franchise record for losses this season and will have the third pick in the coming draft.
Daboll and general manager Joe Schoen both survived what was a particularly painful season as their former star running back Saquon Barkley thrived with division-winning Philadelphia.
Giants fans were constantly reminded of Barkley because of cameras from HBO’s behind-the-scenes franchise “Hard Knocks,” which captured co-owner John Mara explaining how much it would hurt to lose Barkley.
“I’ll have a tough time sleeping if Saquon goes to Philadelphia, I’ll tell you that,” Mara told Schoen in a remarkably prophetic moment of contract talks with Barkley. “As I’ve told you, just being around enough players, he’s the most popular player we have, by far.”
Senior Breaking News Reporter
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