Jaguars Coach Takes Subtle Shot at Caleb Williams, And He's Not Wrong

After Caleb Williams' breakout season in 2025, everything has been coming up roses for the Chicago Bears quarterback. Williams' appearance on the Madden 27 cover made him the first Bear to earn this distinction, and he later edged out Jordan Love for the final spot on ESPN's Top 10 quarterback rankings. Superstardom appears well within his grasp in 2026, and the whole NFL world is talking about it.

One would think that that would motivate Williams and his teammates as they enter training camp with championship expectations, but it apparently has also motivated the head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars, Liam Coen. Appearing on the 1010XL radio show The Drill with Dan Hicken and Jeff Prosser this week, Coen revealed that the lack of chatter about the Jaguars is one of the best parts about coaching that team because he doesn't "have to make up telling your players stuff" to motivate them.

"I look at the NFL website and see if there's anything on the Jaguars," Coen told Dan Hicken and Jeff Prosser. "I think I'll see 40 pictures of Caleb Williams and nothing on us. It's beautiful."

The Bears have earned more chatter than the Jagurs

Chicago Bears QB Caleb Williams looks to pass the ball during Training Camp. Mandatory Credit: Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

I get it. Every NFL player and coach wants to feel like the underdog. Even future Hall of Famer Travis Kelce tried to claim underdog status after winning Super Bowl LVII, his third and the Chiefs' second consecutive championship. So, if Liam Coen wants to use the lack of chatter around his team as fuel, I say more power to him. And he's not even wrong, but the fact is that the Bears have earned more chatter than the Jaguars.

For one, the Bears were a wildly entertaining team in 2025, perhaps the most entertaining team in the league. For the second half of the season, every Bears game was considered 'must-see' TV. The Jaguars may have won more games, but it's hard to recall if even one of their victories featured the kind of drama in any of Chicago's six comeback wins.

Second, the Bears advanced further in the playoffs than they did. The Jaguars lost in the Wild Card round to the Buffalo Bills after a back-and-forth contest. The Bears, on the other hand, scored a miraculous Wild Card win over the Green Bay Packers before falling to the Los Angeles Rams in overtime of the Divisional round.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, Caleb Williams' ascension is a massive storyline in the NFL. He has a chance to be the best quarterback the Chicago Bears have seen in nearly 90 years, at least since the days of Sid Luckman. A team once famous for being where quarterbacks go to die is on the cusp of being quarterback Heaven.

Trevor Lawrence simply can't compete with that kind of storytelling. Sure, his college background is eerily similar to Williams'. Both players were considered dynamic talents, cemented their status as the consensus No. 1 overall pick a year in advance of when they would actually be draft eligible, and then went to long-suffering franchises.

But Williams was arguably an even better prospect than Lawrence, with one former NFL GM even saying he'd take Williams over any quarterback since Peyton Manning. He also went to one of the NFL's charter teams, the world-famous Chicago Bears, while Lawrence went to one of the youngest teams in the league.

Ben Johnson takes the opposite tack to motivating his players

Considering everything about the 2025 season, and the backgrounds of the Bears' and Jaguars' quarterbacks, it's easy to see why Coen might see 40 pictures of Caleb Williams and nothing about the Jaguars when he looks at a sports website. It's nothing personal; it's just business. He can use that apparent disrespect to fire up his team, and maybe it'll work.

But news travels fast in the NFL, and Coen's comments, specifically the name-dropping of Caleb Williams, have already been shared with Chicago Bears head coach Ben Johnson as he spoke with the media on Friday morning. He was asked whether he takes the opposite tack of not letting his players buy into the hype.

"Well, we're the No. 1 regression candidate," Johnson said in a video shared by CHGO Bears on X, which could be a veiled shot at the media narrative surrounding his team. "We've got plenty of motivation ourselves. We talked about Caleb in the past, he's used to handling a lot of attention, so I'm not worried about that."

The Bottom Line

As aforementioned, every NFL coach needs to find a way to motivate his players at the onset of training camp, and seizing hold of a media narrative, or the lack thereof, is a pretty easy way to do that. Coen is taking the lack of attention on his team coming off of a 13-win season as a way to fire up his players, while Johnson appears confident that his players are motivated enough as is.

At the end of the day, Coen isn't wrong. You do see much more chatter about Williams and the Bears than you'll see about Lawrence and the Jaguars, and that should be all the motivation the Bears need for 2026. The entire NFL world is buying what they're selling, and the Bears need to prove that they're not selling lemons.

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