Jaguars' Doug Pederson weighs in on Chiefs' Jawaan Taylor's OL drama

Justin Churchill — College Football & NFL Trending News Writer

Sep 13, 2023 7:55 PM EDT

Doug Pederson is one of the very best coaches in the league. He is a top-five coach in the league today, behind the Kansas City Chiefs' Andy Reid. But Pederson has managed to turn around the Jacksonville Jaguars franchise completely, and you have to respect the way he did it and how fast he did it.

But something he just recently said doesn't sit right. Sure, he is coaching against the Chiefs this week, but he made a comment that would suggest he forgot about a player on the Chiefs that he coached just last season.

This offseason, the Chiefs went after Jawaan Taylor, who was the Jaguars' right tackle last season. Kansas City paid Taylor a lot of money because they believe he can be a premier player at the position in the league.

So far, just after Week 1, the Chiefs and Taylor have been in a lot of drama around the league. Now, they aren't participating, but it's more so what they are doing that is landing the two in everyone's tweets.

Taylor was "jumping early" against the Detroit Lions all night. Really, he just had the cadence down better than anyone else, but it could come off that he was early. He was also lined up wrongly as the right tackle. Those tweets are everywhere. People also believe that he wasn't called for it because the Chiefs are the NFL's golden child, which is a ridiculous thing to say.

Pederson was asked about that on Wednesday.

"I'm sure they've been notified after that first game on Thursday night," Pederson started. "Again, a good player. We know who he is, and he did the same thing here. He has great anticipation with the snap count. I'm optimistic our crowd will be loud, and if they use a silent count, he does a great job of getting off the ball there as well. If they call it, they don't call it. There's only so much you can say."

Pederson apparently forgot Taylor was on his team last year, doing the same thing for them. He was doing the same thing when Kansas City played them both times, and no one said anything. So, yeah, if they don't call it, they don't call it.

Taylor will have a pretty good matchup, though. He was tasked with going up against Aiden Hutchinson last game and did more than hold his own. This week, he will have Josh Allen trying to get to Mahomes.

Allen, who had three sacks last game, is Taylor's former teammate, and both of them know one another's game fairly well.

"Yeah, I think there's that familiarity of being teammates for several years and knowing each other a little bit there," Pederson continued.

"It's going to be a good matchup to watch. Whether it's Josh or Travon [OLB Travon Walker] over there, Jawaan is a really good young football player who played well last week against another fine, young defensive end. Our two guys have their work cut out for them."

The Chiefs offense and Jaguars defense will be a great matchup to watch all day on Sunday. It will be a challenge for both sides.