GM Trent Baalke gets brutally honest about ‘hardest thing’ Jaguars have to overcome to win Super Bowl

Winning the Super Bowl is not easy. The best teams make it look easy, but it’s easily one of the toughest achievements in American sports. The physicality of the game, the numerous injuries, and the sheer difficulty of building a cohesive team makes the Super Bowl one of the most impressive feats in sports. The Jacksonville Jaguars are currently experiencing that hardship.

After finding success in the 2022 season, even making it to the Divisional Round, many had high hopes for the Jaguars in 2023. They were one of the best teams in the AFC during the first half of the season, vying for the top seed in the conference. However, they collapsed in brutal fashion in the second half of the year, eventually leading to them missing the playoffs completely.

In a recent interview, Jaguars GM Trent Baalke talked about this particular struggle. Baalke noted that making a bad team good is relatively easy, but taking that good team to the upper tier of teams is much, much harder, per Josh Oesher.

“The easiest thing to do in the NFL is take an average football team, a struggling football team, and make it competitive,” Baalke said. “The hardest thing to do is take a competitive football team and make it a championship football team. We’re in that phase. We have to take a competitive football team and turn it into a champion. That’s not easy, but that’s our job. It takes good football players, it takes good coaching, it takes good management, it takes great ownership.”

The Jaguars unfortunately play in arguably the most competitive AFC field in recent memory. Even their own division, which has historically not been good, is now showing signs of life. Jacksonville’s competitive window, like most teams, is extremely short, and they’ll have to maximize it as quickly as possible. Trevor Lawrence’s extension is coming soon, and Jacksonville’s cap space will be severely limited when that happens.

Can the Jaguars finally live up to their potential next year? The first step is to retain their key players, including star edge rusher Josh Allen, as well as other key pieces.