Jaguars DC Ryan Nielsen: Josh Allen Is 'Very Important'

The Jaguars' defensive coordinator is obviously very high on his star pass-rusher.

New Jacksonville Jaguars defensive coordinator gushed about his new roster during a press conference Thursday. And it is obvious that among the players he is most excited about is pass-rusher Josh Allen.

“A lot of production, very important. When you’ve got a guy like that, you want him back and think that’s going to work out. I’d be really excited if that works out," Nielsen said when asked about Allen.

In 17 games this year, Allen recorded 17.5 sacks, a career-high 33 quarterback hits, a career-high 17 tackles for loss, two forced fumbles, and an interception. Allen also finished No. 5 among all EDGE players in pressures and No. 7 in win-rate.

"Really excited to work with him, heard nothing but great things. I talked to Josh and he’s been fantastic. That’ll get worked out, get him back and get him going, hopefully get him to improve," Nielsen said. "That’s the ultimate goal, if we can just get that much better next year, what does that look like? That’s pretty exciting. That’s what we want to work towards.”

An improvement from Allen would obviously be staggering after he finished 2023 as one of the NFL's best pass-rushers. Improving upon the best year of his career would mean making him a 20-sack player who contends with Myles Garrett and Micah Parsons for the title of best pass-rusher in the NFL. 

But it would also mean that Nielsen did his job. While it remains to be seen whether Allen will return in 2024 on a new multi-year contract or on the franchise tag, it is clear that Nielsen views him as a huge piece of what he hopes to accomplish. 

“Rush and coverage. We have to be multiple, the first thing we have to do is affect the quarterback in that we can’t allow the ball to come out of his hand quickly, then the rush doesn’t get there. If the coverage has holes in it or give an easy throw, it doesn’t matter who we’ve got coming off the edge. We’ve got a couple of good edge guys here," Nielsen said. 

"We have to get the quarterback to hold it, disguise as big, we’ve got multiple packages on third downs so we change week to week or maybe we don’t, so keep them guessing. Really big early in the game, we try to go out there and they’re trying to identify what we’re doing on third down, then go from there. Not, ‘Hey, we’re going to be in this look and every single time we’re going to be able to make this throw.’ We’ve got to be multiple and keep changing. They’re just too good on offense, the quarterbacks are too good, offensive coordinators, there’s so many guys over there that can identify. That’s what we’ve got to keep it multiple and keep changing up the looks.”