Column: Kevin O'Connell's Hiring in Minnesota is Another Black Eye on Jaguars' Coaching Search

The Jaguars again look unprepared and amateurish as a result of a self-inflicted wound, this time the result of Kevin O'Connell taking a job without ever speaking with the Jaguars.

The Minnesota Vikings reportedly have a new head coach. The only new thing the Jacksonville Jaguars have, however, is a fresh egg on their face as a result of the Vikings hire of Kevin O'Connell. 

There is no other way to put it. The Jaguars should be embarrassed and ashamed of many things during this coaching cycle, but the fumbling of O'Connell as a candidate takes the cake. 

To summarize, the Jaguars kicked off the first of over a dozen interviews for their head coach role on Dec. 30 with Doug Pederson. After Pederson, the Jaguars spoke to Jim Caldwell, Kellen Moore, Byron Leftwich, Nathaniel Hackett, Kellen Moore, Todd Bowles, Bill O'Brien, and Matt Eberflus. 

The Jaguars then talked to Eberflus and Leftwich a second time each, while also making plans to speak with Hackett a second time before he took the Denver Broncos job. 

Then, after double-digit interviews and re-interviews, the Jaguars evidently suddenly woke up and said "hey, maybe O'Connell is to answer to a coaching search that has dragged on for a month already." 

Reports of the Jaguars having interest in O'Connell broke the morning of Jan. 30, an entire month after the Jaguars officially kicked off the search for Urban Meyer's replacement. In breaking the news of their interest, NFL Network's Ian Rapoport went as far as to call him "a dark horse who could quickly become a front runner."

The Jaguars should have made sure that report never reached the light of day. By the Jaguars' interest in O'Connell becoming public, as did the Jaguars' failure to put together a coherent plan to find Meyer's replacement. 

Because the Jaguars did not make O'Connell a part of their first wave of interviews and talked to him at least at some point in the Divisional Round, the Jaguars simply didn't. The only way the Jaguars could speak with O'Connell was if the Rams lost in the conference championship, which they of course didn't. 

As a result, teams like the Vikings and Texans were able to hold second interviews with O'Connell while the Jaguars could do, well, nothing. No zooms. No interview in person. No asking him how the weather is in Los Angeles in January. 

The Jaguars' failure to put together a coherent and strategic plan left them grasping for straws and at O'Connell's name a full month after the search began. As a result of that same failure, the Jaguars couldn't even get a single appearance with the potential dark horse.

They waited for Leftwich and Hackett, but the idea to talk to O'Connell seemingly didn't hit them until thirty minutes past the eleventh hour. One could believe the Jaguars wanted to bide their time and not show their hand with O'Connell until late in the process, but it is much more believable that the Jaguars' interest in O'Connell didn't manifest until it was too late to even hold a conversation with him. 

That is laughable in terms of its clumsiness. The Jaguars should be embarrassed that any reports of their interest in O'Connell came out at all. Since it did, now the entire league knows the Jaguars are driving without two hands on the wheel. 

Wanting to talk to O'Connell but not being able to do so because of a failure in the process speaks volumes about the state of the Jaguars, and it has nothing to do with O'Connell's ability as a coach. 

It is worse than the mystifying decision to keep Trent Baalke. It is more damaging to their image than bringing in Bill O'Brien for an interview. Simply put, the O'Connell incident is the most obvious and telling sign yet that the Jaguars don't know what they are doing and are even more unsure what direction they are heading in. 

In a time and age where the Jaguars look like a team who is operating under a guise of amateurism and aloofness, the Jaguars' inability to speak to O'Connell a single time before he accepted the Vikings job is more than a red flag. It is a sweeping vindication of everything the rest of the NFL and the Jaguars' fan base have been saying for the last two months. 

It is the Jaguars openly telling the other 31 franchises, national media, and their fans that they are simply going with the flow. 

The Jaguars could have entered this offseason with a well-put together and organized plan to replace Meyer. They had more time than every franchise but the Raiders to find a head coach. 

Instead, the Jaguars ran a process that was without direction and vision. As a result, the Jaguars got lost. The O'Connell fiasco -- and it is indeed a fiasco in terms of optics -- screams that. 

The Jaguars can still land a good head coach. There is a strong argument to make against O'Connell even being a true candidate based on what he has done in the NFL. But for as long as coaching searches take place, the Jaguars and their failed pursuit of a conversation with O'Connell will serve as an example of searches gone wrong.