The more Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan watched his team play, the more he realized one thing:

"We needed a rebuild from the ground up," Khan said.

So the Jaguars fired coach Mike Mularkey on Thursday after just one season, the worst in franchise history. The move came 10 days after Khan fired general manager Gene Smith.

Khan also introduced new GM David Caldwell on Thursday, and by parting ways with Mularkey, gave him a clean slate heading into 2013.

"I've always been a part of a winner," said Caldwell, who signed a five-year deal. "I've never been a part of a losing team."

Mularkey becomes the eighth NFL coach fired since the regular season ended. Two of those teams have since hired new coaches, with Andy Reid, who was fired by the Eagles, taking over the Chiefs and Doug Marrone joining the Bills.

Among candidates for the Jaguars coaching job are expected to be 49ers offensive coordinator Greg Roman, Rams offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer and Falcons special-teams coach Keith Armstrong, league sources told ESPN.

Roman and Caldwell were teammates and roommates in the 1990s while attending John Carroll University.

"I think Greg is a heck of a coach," Caldwell said.

The Jaguars already have requested permission from the Rams to interview Schottenheimer, according to a league source. Schottenheimer interviewed for the Jaguars' job last year.

Mularkey, who went 2-14 this season, became the eighth head coach fired since the end of the regular season. He looked like he would be one and done when Khan parted ways with Smith last week and gave Mularkey's assistants permission to seek other jobs. Even though Khan ultimately hired Mularkey, Smith directed the coaching search last January that started and ended with the former Atlanta Falcons offensive coordinator.

"I felt like we needed a fresh start here," Caldwell said. "Coming in here as a first-time general manager, I'm looking for a co-builder of our team. When I talked to Shad in terms of a culture change along the football side, I felt like it was more of that. I felt like it was an atmosphere of change. I felt like that to do that, you've got to have a fresh start across the board."

Mularkey's brief tenure -- he didn't even last a year -- was filled with mistakes. His biggest one may have been his loyalty to Smith, who assembled a roster that lacked talent on both sides of the ball.

Mularkey probably stuck with Smith's franchise quarterback, Blaine Gabbert, longer than he should have. And the coach's insistence that the team was closer than outsiders thought and his strong stance that he had the roster to turn things around became comical as the losses mounted. The Jaguars lost eight games by at least 16 points, a staggering number of lopsided losses in a parity-filled league.

Mularkey would have been better served had he said publicly what he voiced privately: That the Jaguars didn't have enough playmakers or a starting-caliber quarterback.

Instead, he never conceded that Jacksonville was a rebuilding project that needed time.