Tuned out: Marrone ‘can’t handle’ Super Bowls

1:02 pm | September 12, 2018 | Go to Source | Author:

4:43 PM ET

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Jaguars coach Doug Marrone did not watch last year’s Super Bowl, but it wasn’t just because it was too painful after his team lost to New England in the AFC Championship Game.

It has been a long time since he watched any Super Bowl. Decades, in fact.

Not since he began coaching, because it’s just a reminder that his team failed to get there.

“When you aspire to go there, and you’re not there, I just don’t want to go through the whole season again in my mind, and not being there,” Marrone said Wednesday on a conference call with New England media. “… I’m usually so pissed off, I can’t handle it.”

Not only does Marrone not watch live, he said he doesn’t watch it on tape, either. He wouldn’t even admit to watching last year’s Super Bowl to help prepare for Sunday’s game at TIAA Bank Field against the Patriots, if only to see how Philadelphia coach Doug Pederson attacked New England.

In his recently released book, Pederson was critical of the Jaguars’ lack of aggressiveness late in the first half of last season’s AFC title game.

“I think our defensive and offensive coaches obviously have watched it,” Marrone said of the Eagles’ victory over the Patriots.

So when was the last time Marrone did watch a Super Bowl?

“Probably when I wasn’t coaching and I was allowed to gamble,” Marrone said. “Probably when I was like 12 — when I had a little money on it.”

Marrone turned 54 in July, so a little math means the last one he may have watched was Super XI, when Oakland beat Minnesota 32-14 on Jan. 9, 1977.

“I don’t watch,” Marrone said. “I got a question about if I saw Coach [Tom] Coughlin’s Super Bowls and I’m like, ‘No.’

“I don’t know why everyone doesn’t believe that.”