Coen’s Staff Hitting Jaguars With Plenty of Homework

Jacksonville Jaguars players getting crash course in diverse curriculum taught by diverse staff.

Jan 13, 2025; Glendale, AZ, USA; Minnesota Vikings assistant quarterbacks coach Grant Udinski against the Los Angeles Rams during an NFC wild card game at State Farm Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images / Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images

Any new coaching staff is generally a product of where the head coach has been. Well, Liam Coen has collected a lot of frequent-flyer miles over his NFL coaching career.

The last time Jacksonville’s new head coach was in the same place more than one year in a row was 2018-20. Over his first two years working under Sean McVay, Coen served as the Rams’ assistant wide receivers coach for two seasons and then in 2020 as assistant quarterbacks coach.

And because McVay has a large coaching tree, Coen’s Jacksonville staff has a wide range of backgrounds.

“You're always pulling, right? Everybody's pulling from different places to ultimately make it ours,” Coen said Wednesday. “We've got to watch those tapes of where we all came from and, ‘OK, fine. What is the ‘25 Jags, though? Like, how does this fit us?’ We may not have that answer right now.”

Right now, Coen and his coaches are passing along their diverse backgrounds to their players, but nothing is on the practice field at this stage of the offseason workout program.

“That's the kind of cool part,” Coen said, “is we're going to throw as much at these guys mentally in this offseason, as much as we can handle and probably more, much more actually, because it's not a physical time of the year. It's a time of the year, we can stress them mentally, ultimately throw as much at them as we can from Minnesota, from Tampa, from L.A., from Green Bay, whatever it is, and see what we can handle.”

Minnesota means the fingerprints of Kevin O’Connell and Sam Darnold will appear on the Jaguars’ playbook. O’Connell preceded Coen as McVay’s offensive coordinator before the Vikings made O’Connell head coach in 2022. In turn, O’Connell hired Grant Udinski as assistant quarterbacks coach. In February, Coen made Udinski his first Jaguars offensive coordinator.

Tampa represents Coen’s lone season as Buccaneers offensive coordinator, last year, when Baker Mayfield put up the best numbers of his career. It also marked the best season of Coen’s offensive-coordinator career.

Green Bay means the roots of Anthony Campanile’s most recent stop, as linebackers coach of the Packers. Now the Jaguars’ defensive coordinator, Campanile has a diverse background himself.

All of it means the Jaguars are content to grow together and ultimately find their identity, well, when they find their identity.

“We're not going to know who we're truly going to be for a while,” Coen said, “but it's more so testing to see how much they can handle. And if maybe some of those concepts, schemes, fundamentals fit our players. That's a great question because that's something that we're constantly working through right now as a staff.”

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