JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — After every victory celebration in the Jacksonville Jaguars‘ locker room this season, coach Liam Coen delivered an energetic fist pump and an emphatic “How’s that feel?” It’s a phrase his father, Tim, used after victories as a college and high school coach in Rhode Island — though his fist pump was slightly different.
As the season went on and the wins piled up — 11 … 12 … 13 — the fist pumps got bigger and more effusive. As did the noise and cheers from players and coaches.
“[It’s] a lot of buildup, a ton of prep, emotions, communication, there’s that border of being exhausted/adrenaline at different points,” the first-time head coach said of the postgame tradition. “So yeah, even as a coach, you want to let it loose a little bit after.”
Players love it, too.
“I’m not sure what it is … If it’s a fist pump or whatever, but it’s pretty exciting every single week to see him come in and just have the juice and energy,” tight end Brenton Strange said. “… It makes us want to fight for him and fight for the organization and fight for everybody in the building even more.”
When owner Shad Khan hired Coen late last January, the Jaguars were coming off a 4-13 season. They had a struggling quarterback in Trevor Lawrence and a defense that ranked 31st in total defense, last in pass defense, and forced a league-low nine turnovers.
Almost one year later, Coen — along with executive vice president Tony Boselli and general manager James Gladstone — has led the Jaguars to a 13-4 record (second-most victories in a season in franchise history), an AFC South championship, and to a home wild-card game on Sunday (1 p.m. ET, CBS) against the Buffalo Bills.
What sparked the drastic turnaround was a change in team culture to a “one-voice” approach, the willingness to adapt and move on from assignments that weren’t working, and getting Lawrence to play the best football of his career.
If you ask the players, they’ll tell you Coen, 40, is the main reason for that.
“He knows what it takes to be a great football team,” running back Travis Etienne Jr. said. “He knows what the players need to hear in order to get ready for Sunday. And I feel like he’s been great for us. He kind of came here to change everyone’s mindset and just truly instilled that growth process for everyone.
“We’re thankful for him and just want to continue to see what he has in store for us.”
IN WEEK 12, the Arizona Cardinals tied the game against the Jaguars with a field goal with three seconds to go in the fourth quarter. The Jaguars answered with Cam Little‘s 52-yard field goal on their first possession and the defense secured the 27-24 victory by breaking up a fourth-down pass inside the 5-yard line.
In the locker room afterward, Strange succinctly captured what he felt was a change inside the organization.
“I’m just so proud of this team for staying steady and never giving up because it’s been different in the past,” he said. “What’s different about this team is we just stay steady and we just keep going no matter what.”
There is no misalignment between the head coach and general manager regarding playing time, team identity and playcalling duties. The defensive players aren’t playing rock, paper, scissors to decide who goes onto the field. And there are no accusations of players quitting.
Now, there’s synergy between Coen, Boselli and Gladstone.
They operate with what Boselli called a “one voice” approach, meaning the message presented to the players, coaches, staff and the rest of the organization is the same: There’s a certain standard that must be met if you are going to be a member of the Jaguars.
“Mentally and physically tough dudes that love to play football and they love the game of football,” Coen said in Week 18, explaining what he expects from his players. “… we want these guys to ultimately care about each other and care about the team first.”
“…There’s going to be hard times, you might lose your job for a week … You may have a great game, you might not have a great game. Well, that’s mental toughness, and so guys that can withstand those types of different ebbs and flows in a season, that’s what we’re looking for.”
The Jaguars’ commitment to that showed early on with the trade of running back Tank Bigsby.
Bigsby began the offseason competing with Etienne to be the team’s top back, but as training camp progressed, it became clear Etienne had won the job. Bigsby wasn’t happy, and the staff had several conversations with him about his attitude, per a source with knowledge of the situation. He had only five carries in the Jaguars’ season-opening victory over Carolina (Etienne had 16 and ran for 143 yards) and at times didn’t engage with teammates and coaches on the sideline.
He was traded to the Philadelphia Eagles the following day.
Coen has tried to instill playing as a team and for each other since day one.
Multiple players said it was evident in January that things had changed from the atmosphere and feeling inside the team facility in 2024. Coen mixed up the locker room assignments in the offseason so players could get to know different teammates. Defensive end Josh Hines-Allen said competition drills during offseason conditioning and organized team activities brought everyone together.
“That right there was a good start for us to being [a] competitive team,” Hines-Allen said. “Wanting to celebrate your teammates, but then also wanting to beat ’em, too. So I thought it was a great start for us.”
Coen has also established his motivational style.
He has leaned into the “nobody respects us” approach. That came to the forefront after the Jaguars’ Week 14 victory over the Indianapolis Colts when he responded to a question about how the Jaguars would handle the respect that would surely come after they improved to 9-4 and took over first place in the AFC South.
“That’s the beauty of it. It ain’t coming,” he said. “You know that. It’s not. And that’s the beauty of it, and that’s totally fine.”
Two weeks later, he seized on a comment Denver Broncos coach Sean Payton made about the Jaguars in the days before the teams were to play at Empower Field at Mile High: “It’s a smaller market but you see a real good team.”
The first thing Coen said in his postgame news conference following the Jaguars’ 34-20 victory was this: “Just thankful that a small-market team like us can come into a place like Mile High and get it done.”
Linebacker Foyesade Oluokun said Coen made sure everyone knew what Payton said before the game, and the players ate it up.
“The untrained eye might say, ‘Oh, that was just a nice comment. I thought [Payton] called us a good team,'” Oluokun said the next day. “But we don’t like that little-brother feel, so that’s really the kind of energy that he brought to the locker room.
“… I like that energy.”
COEN SAID HE believes that being unwilling to change can be an impediment to success.
That is evident in the changes he made to the passing game when it wasn’t playing well early in the season (207 yards per game, eight TD passes, five interceptions in six weeks). He made changes in the defensive line rotation to see if some of the undrafted rookies would be more productive than two veterans. He moved players into different roles, adjusted the way they were being used, and Gladstone helped by adding to the roster.
“Whether it’s culturally, whether it’s the message that you’re sending to your players on a week-to-week basis, change of schedules, things like that, having the flexibility to do what you think is best versus [what you’ve been doing], ” Coen said.
“When you have a good group of guys around you, people around you that you’re able to bounce ideas off of and take some things in to be able to ultimately make the best decision that you think at the time, that is the balance for sure.”
Receiver Brian Thomas Jr. had a standout rookie season in 2024, but he struggled with drops and appeared to shy away from contact early this season, so Coen elevated rookie Travis Hunter to his WR1 slot in Week 7. Against the Los Angeles Rams that week, Hunter caught eight passes for 101 yards and a touchdown — one of three 100-yard games by Jaguars players this season.
The Jaguars weren’t getting much from receiver Dyami Brown, whom they signed to a one-year, $10 million contract in the offseason. Brown had 16 catches for 194 yards, three drops, four carries and averaged 40 snaps per game in Weeks 1-7, so the Jaguars moved Parker Washington — who started the season as the No. 4 receiver — into a bigger role.
When Hunter suffered a season-ending knee injury during practice before the next game, Washington got even more work. He had 17 catches in the seven games before Hunter’s injury and 36 (and counting) in the nine games since — including two 100-yard outings.
The Jaguars also acquired receiver Jakobi Meyers at the trade deadline from the Las Vegas Raiders to make up for Hunter’s absence. Since then, Meyers has become Lawrence’s most trusted target, especially in the middle of the field.
On defense, the Jaguars were getting minimal production from veteran defensive lineman Emmanuel Ogbah (12 tackles in eight games despite playing more than 60% of the snaps in four of those games) and 2024 second-round pick Maason Smith (11 tackles in nine games) over the first nine games of the season. Instead, they turned to undrafted rookies Danny Striggow and B.J. Greene to fill Ogbah’s role and Matt Dickerson in place of Smith. Ogbah has been inactive in three of the last five weeks and Smith has been inactive since Week 15.
Coen’s communication skills are elite, said center Robert Hainsey, who was with Coen last season in Tampa Bay. Players appreciate Coen’s openness and honesty, and his ability to have tough conversations, he said.
“Every coach has to be able to have those hard conversations, and [Coen’s] willing to do them and just be candid with you,” Hainsey said. “And it’s not an attack. It’s not in the front, it’s not personal. Whatever it is, it’s just like, ‘Hey, here’s what’s going on right now.’ And when people come to you like a man, you respond like a man. And when there’s that back-and-forth between players and coaches, I think it’s a product of a good culture.”
Another change Coen made was with his starting quarterback.
Starting in the offseason, Coen reworked Lawrence’s footwork — for example, he is now lining up with his left foot ahead of his right in shotgun formation (Lawrence had done it the other way his entire football career) — and standardized his drops.
It’s all tied into Coen’s offense. The footwork is paired with certain concepts, routes and depth of the drop, for example, which is connected to the timing.
While it took Lawrence half a season to adapt to his third offensive scheme since being drafted, it all seemed to click after Coen made one more adjustment. He told Lawrence to “cut it loose.” It meant Lawrence was no longer trying not to make a mistake. Over the past two months, Lawrence has a 77.3 QBR (third highest in NFL), 251.1 passing yards per game, 19 touchdowns, five interceptions, 187 rushing yards and five rushing touchdowns. And the Jaguars are 8-0.
“Me and Liam, we have a good relationship and we just are constantly communicating,” Lawrence said. “And so, I think that as a quarterback is a good feeling when you know your coach trusts you. …
“That’s a big part of this whole team deal is the trust with coach to us and vice versa. And I think we have that and it’s continuing to grow every week, so it’s been fun.”
EVERYTHING COEN HAS built in his first season as a head coach will be tested Sunday against the Bills and reigning NFL MVP Josh Allen.
The Bills are 1.5-point road favorites, according to DraftKings sportsbook, despite the Jaguars being AFC South champs and winners of eight consecutive games.
The Bills lead the NFL in rushing (159.6 yards per game) and have the NFL’s top-ranked pass defense (156.9 YPG), but dealing with Allen is the Jaguars’ main problem. He has scored 39 total touchdowns (25 passing, 14 rushing), ranks seventh in Total QBR (64.7), and in mid-December rallied the Bills from a 21-0 deficit to beat New England 35-31 in Gillette Stadium.
“I remember we played him in 2020, and we played him again in 2022 [when Coen was with the Los Angeles Rams], and he did some really good things against us like stiff-arming defenders, throwing the ball down the field a million miles,” Coen said. “To watch him play, the competitor, so many playoff games, division, whatever it is, big games, he typically shows up and makes critical plays at critical moments, and that’s why he’s been an MVP candidate for a long time.”
The Jaguars have the league’s best run defense (85.6 yards per game), and Lawrence — who finished the season with 4,007 passing yards and 38 total touchdowns (29 passing, nine rushing) — is playing the best football of his career during the team’s eight-game winning streak.
Win or lose, Coen completely changed one of the NFL’s worst teams around in less than a year.
“Liam is a great coach,” cornerback Greg Newsome II said. “For this to be his first year is unbelievable. I think he should win Coach of the Year.”
