Coach Liam Coen’s debut season in Jacksonville was historic, but can he avoid a sophomore slump with the Jaguars?
Liam Coen’s first season as head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars can only be described as a success.
Despite a crushing 27-24 home loss to the Buffalo Bills in the Wild-Card round of the NFL Playoffs last Sunday, Coen led the Jaguars to their best season since 1999, when Jacksonville finished the regular season 14-2 and made it to the AFC Championship game before falling to the Tennessee Titans.
Although Coen has Duval County abuzz after finishing the season with double-digit wins for the first time since 2017, Jaguars’ fans have seen this script before.
This season Coen became the third first-year head coach to lead Jacksonville to the postseason in his debut season. It’s not that Jaguars have not had success in their 29-year history, but sustaining that success has been an issue.
Two other first-year head coaches have taken the Jaguars to the playoffs in their debut seasons — Doug Marrone in 2017 and Doug Pederson in 2022.
But both hit a sophomore slump in Year 2 of their respective tenures.
After finishing 10-6 in Marrone’s first full season as head coach, Jacksonville advanced to the AFC title game before losing to the New England Patriots. (Marrone served as the interim coach for the last two games of the 2016 season, after the team fired Gus Bradley.) But in 2018, the Jags fell to 5-11 and missed the playoffs under Marrone's watch.
The Jaguars continued their slide into near-irrelevance during Marrone's tenure, finishing the 2020 season 1-15 before his ouster ... which ushered in the disastrous, but brief Urban Meyer era.
Pederson was hired in 2022, after the Jags won just three games the previous season.
Pederson turned Jacksonville into a contender, finishing 9-8 in his first year at the helm and advancing to the playoffs, where the Jaguars fell to the Kansas City Chiefs in the divisional round. In 2023, Pederson's Jags again had a 9-8 record, but this time failed to advance to the playoffs.
Jaguars QB Trevor Lawrence bobbles the ball against the Bills in the two teams' AFC Wild Card matchup on Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026, at Everbank Stadium. (Corey Perrine/Florida Times-Union)This season was the seventh time in franchise history the Jaguars finished the season with double-digit wins. But not since the early Tom Coughlin days has Jacksonville been able to sustain such success for the next season.
Following their franchise-best 14-2 season in 1999, the Jags finished 7-9 in 2000. After soldiering to a 12-4 regular-season record in 2005, Jacksonville subsequently went 8-8 in 2006. In 2007, the Jags were 11-5, but followed up the next season by going 5-11. Finally, in 2017, Jacksonville went 10-6, but then settled for 5-11 the following season.
No coach since Coughlin has led the Jaguars on a run of four straight seasons of playoff-berth football (1996-1999), nor has been able to lead this team to the playoffs in back-to-back seasons.
Only time will tell if history will repeat itself, or if Coen can keep the momentum of the 2025 season going, and make a place for himself outside the shadow of Coughlin's presence in Jaguars lore.
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