(02-03-2022, 08:33 PM)TheDuke007 Wrote: I agree with much of what you said, but the portion in bold is not necessarily true.  We don't know what is said behind closed doors.  Leftwich may not have been their first choice.  They clearly offered him the job on the belief that he would work with Trent Baalke as GM.  Leftwich didn't reveal his ultimatum until after being offered the job.  Pederson may have been the Jaguars first choice as head coach but wasn't offered the job because he made his ultimatum clear during his first interview.  It could be ditto for 3 other coaches as well.  For all we know, Leftwich could have been their fifth choice.  Everyone else just made their ultimatums clear up-front.

Then, after 30 days of interviewing and searching, Khan realized that no good head coaching candidate would accept the position with Baalke in sole control of personnel.  As such, he comes up with a compromise.  What if Baalke is still employed, but a VP of Football Operations (Spielman) would be put over him and would have final say over all personnel decisions?  They then go back to their first choice, Doug Pederson, to see if that is acceptable.  He agrees to a second interview and considers accepting a job.  

I fully admit this is speculation, but it is also speculation to assume that Leftwich was their first choice.  We don't know how many were not offered the job because they refused to work with Baalke.

Very plausible scenario of how it all played out.  But of course goes back to that unanswered question as to why Shad feels the need to center the entire coaching search around who will work with Baalke and under what circumstance will a coach find it acceptable to have Baalke as part of the organization.  It really is bizarre.  And it's not as though Baalke has been here long enough to develop some kind of deep personal relationship with Shad.  Heck Shad isn't in town long enough for that to happen.  It's very possible if not likely he was completely oblivious to how the rest of the league felt about Baalke, but when it dawned on him halfway through these interviews, did he feel it was too late to make a change?  Is it possible it's just a contract thing where Shad doesnt want to have to pay out Meyer and Baalke's contract all at once?  Hopefully at some point in the future we'll get an idea of how this all went down.

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