Doug Marrone Comes in at No. 32 in Head Coach Rankings

2020 hasn't quite been the year the Jacksonville Jaguars and head coach Doug Marrone were hoping for.

What began as a year fueled by the excitement of new faces and a Week 1 upset over the Indianapolis Colts quickly spiraled into a nightmarish 12-game losing streak, leaving the Jaguars with the league's second-worst record entering Week 15.

As a result, Marrone's job status following Week 17 is in question and general manager Dave Caldwell has already been fired. The duo was given a win-now mandate by owner Shad Khan last offseason, but they failed in a big way.

Because of those failures, it isn't surprising to see Marrone's ranking on EdjSports' newest ranking of the league's 32 head coaches.

EdjSports.com, the data science and analytics sports firm that owns Football Outsiders, reviews every coaching decision during the season and then does a weekly ranking of the league's coaches for the season. This week, Marrone came in at last place -- No. 32 overall.

Image via edjsports. — Image via edjsports

"EdjSports analyzes every coaching decision during the course of a season. The EdjFootball model enables an in-depth examination of all critical calls (4th downs, PATs, and kickoffs), in terms of the amount of game-winning chance at stake. The coach’s play-calling choices (run, pass, field goal, punt) are assessed at the point of decision (pre-snap) and rated with respect to their impact on winning the game," the company's site explains.

"As a result of this process all play-calling decisions can be objectively classified as either optimal decisions (correct calls) or suboptimal decisions (errors).

EdjSports then looks at two different variables for the coach rankings: their power index ranking (EPI) and offensive play calling (CCI) ranking. The final coach's ranking is then a weighted average of the two. To learn more about what goes into those two metrics, read here

So, why is Marrone ranked all the way down at No. 32? The fact he is ranked at 30th in EPI is the biggest reason, with the Jaguars ranking in the lower end of every major statistic in 2020.

Marrone has also played it conservative more often than not when it comes to his decision-making in 2020, which has dinged him quite a bit over the weeks as EdjSports grades the best and worst decisions of the week before.

Marrone, who has overseen a 12-game losing streak that is the longest of any single-season losing streak in franchise history, has been ranked No. 32 in the last two weeks. Former Detroit Lions head coach Matt Patricia held the spot before Marrone.

"The approach for me is that the results aren’t what you wanted, I understand that, at the end of the day, when you’re in a community that I love, I really do. ... We have an owner [Shad Khan] that wants to win. I think that’s awesome; I really do. I mean he wants to win and there’s no mistake about it. When you go out and you’re filling up your car with gas or you’re going to a convenience store or you’re going out to dinner, there’s a sense of it’s embarrassing," Marrone said on Nov. 30 when asked about the unknown nature of his job after 2020.

"I mean I feel that way at times and the only thing I have to rely on to make sure I can walk around and be a good example is to know that I’ve fought my a** off, that I’ve done everything I possibly can to make sure that I’m doing my job to the best of my abilities to try to win football games because that’s the only thing at the end of the day. I’ve learned this a long time ago, whatever happens with the results and the records, it is what it is, but at the end of the day you have to look at yourself in the mirror and you’re going to have to say, ‘Hey listen, did I give everything I had?’ If you did, that’s it, the results are what they are, and you did. But if you don’t, I don’t know how you could ever live with yourself."

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