Ignoring outside noise from the media and inside noise from stadium construction are key parts of Liam Coen's demands to ensure the Jaguars don't regress after a stellar regular season.
The Jacksonville Jaguars shocked the NFL last season by going 13-4 and winning the AFC South division title.
Under first-year head coach Liam Coen, the Jaguars had a remarkable nine-win improvement from the previous season. Coen has already earned a reputation for being an offensive genius and one of the NFL's top play-callers.
Heading into Year 2 under Coen, Jacksonville is looking to build upon last year's success and have winning in the playoffs, not just the regular season, be the standard.
Expectations for the Jaguars are mixed heading into the season.
Most analysts have heavily criticized the team's offseason, and believe the Jaguars will see a decline this year.
Chris Simms of NBC Sports called Jacksonville "a Super Bowl football team," while CBS Sports' Pete Prisco picked the Jaguars to win Super Bowl LXI over the Dallas Cowboys.
Outside expectations, positive or negative, don't matter to Coen. He is doing everything in his power to have his team focused on getting better and is determined not to let the Jaguars suffer a Year 2 letdown.
Jeff Howe of The Athletic wrote about the lengths Coen has gone to ensure the Jaguars overcome any would-be distractions this season, including one that will be staring them in the face every day.
Anyone. Anytime. Anywhere.
That is the new mindset Coen, general manager James Gladstone, and executive vice president of football operations Tony Boselli came up with while vacationing together this summer.
Howe reports that the mindset was born as a way to block out distractions, especially the daily distraction of playing football in the middle of a construction site.
EverBank Stadium, home of the Jaguars, is undergoing a $1.4 billion renovation. The Stadium of the Future will be ready for the Jaguars in 2028. The project will transform the current stadium into a modern, "one-of-a-kind" football palace grand enough to host Super Bowls and other high-profile events. New renderings show what the finished product will look like, and it appears to be worth the wait.
For this season, the home team is going to have to deal with the sights and sounds of an active construction zone while they work. It's not the easiest environment to be able to focus in.
To Coen, it doesn't matter. He got ahead of the situation, not waiting for it to become a distraction before addressing it.
“I wanted to get out ahead of that,” Coen told The Athletic. “I said, ‘Guys, we’re going to hear this. We’re going to see it. We may feel it. But it ain’t gonna be a f—ing reason. It’s not going to be an excuse. Because at the end of the day, nobody cares in this league. Nobody cares.’”
He's right. The NFL is a cruel business. Nobody is going to take it easy on you because your best player is injured or your home stadium is now a construction site with limited capacity.
As Howe notes, Coen also researched why other second-year coaches struggle, something that the Jaguars organization is very familiar with.
"Coen leaned on his coaching peers this offseason while researching the challenges he’d encounter as a second-year coach. The organization has also gone through recent struggles with second-year coaches, going 3-13 in 2014 with Gus Bradley, 5-11 in 2018 (after reaching the AFC Championship Game a season before) with Doug Marrone and falling out of the playoffs despite staying level at 9-8 in 2023 with Doug Pederson."
Coen also brought in great players, some former Jags, like DeMarcus Ware, Fred Taylor, Maurice Jones-Drew, Devin and Jason McCourty, and Marcedes Lewis, to the team's practices. He knows those legends can teach his players a thing or two, and knows he has the type of players who want to learn how to get better, as does Coen.
“It was awesome,” Coen said. “Anything those guys could provide is going to help make us better. What can’t DeMarcus Ware tell Travon Walker, Josh Hines-Allen, Arik Armstead to give them an edge? I mean, I got better as a coach from the McCourty twins being here, no doubt.”
Another message Coen wanted to make sure sinks in for his players is that "we have not arrived." One good season means nothing, and however hard they worked last year to achieve what they did, they'll have to work that much harder to build upon it.
Final Thoughts
Coen is doing everything possible to make sure the Jaguars don't take success for granted. No matter how good their regular season was, they still came up short in the playoffs.
Going from bad to good is a lot easier than going from good to great. Coen, his staff, and the players must all work even harder now that they won't be able to surprise anybody.
Coen has created a culture he believes in, and which his players have bought into. They will need to lean on that culture whenever adversity strikes.
Making sure the Jaguars take another step forward and not a step backwards has been his main focus.
It won't be long before the results of Coen's focus show up on the field.
