Darrell Bevell Hands Jaguars' Play-Calling Duties Over to Brian Schottenheimer

The Jaguars will have a new play-caller in Week 16 vs. the New York Jets.

The Jacksonville Jaguars will have a new play-caller when they travel to take on the New York Jets in Week 16, with interim head coach Darrell Bevell announcing Monday that he would be handing those duties over to passing game coordinator Brian Schottenheimer. 

“Yeah, so what I’ve done, I’ve thought about it as I told you guys I would—I thought about it a lot, had some conversations with [Jaguars General Manager] Trent [Baalke] and everybody. I think what I’m going to do is I’m going to turn the play calling over to Brian Schottenheimer to really help on the offensive side of the ball," Bevell said on Monday. 

Bevell hinted last week that he would look at giving up play-calling duties in the wake of Urban Meyer's firing on Thursday morning. Due to the change taking place in the middle of the week after the Jaguars had already begun to gameplan for the Houston Texans, Bevell kept the play-calling under his share of new responsibilities, while also moving from the booth to the sidelines. 

“Well, I think I want to get through this week. I’m going to call the plays this week and then it’s just later in the week than it normally would be, so we’re going to do status quo," Bevell said last Thursday, his first day as the Jaguars new interim head coach. "We’re going to keep everything the same this week and then over the weekend, we’ll mull over some things and probably have some conversations.”

Since then, the Jaguars lost 30-16 to the Texans to get swept by the 3-11 Texans on the season. The blowout loss at home saw the offense, defense, and special teams all have major gaffes, while the Jaguars again scored just one touchdown and failed to put the ball into the end zone through the air. 

No. 1 overall pick Trevor Lawrence has just nine touchdowns on the season and has thrown just one touchdown in the last seven games. The Jaguars failed to punch the ball into the end zone from the red zone at a few different points in Sunday's game, having to settle for field goals against an otherwise struggling Houston defense that was missing several starters.

The Jaguars offense put together several scoring drives in the first half and moved the ball at a decent rate, but the second-half saw the Jaguars punt the ball in back-to-back possessions while only down by seven -- once due to a miss by Lawrence and once due to a third-down drop.

"Just to keep getting better. Offensively just to get more and more consistent. Like today I thought the first half was really good. We didn't come away with as many points as we would have liked. I thought we should have finished some of those drives, but we were moving the ball really consistently, and then the second half started out bad, then got a couple drives and then just didn't finish well," Lawrence said on Sunday. 

"We had two opportunities at the end and didn't take advantage of them. Then really put our defense in a bad spot. I'd just like to see us be more consistent. Like I said, that's me included. We've all got our part, and we've just got to take ownership of it and go be better. That's what I'd like to see the next few weeks, and it starts with all of us."

Schottenheimer has been an offensive coordinator at several stops in his career, including with the Jets (2006-2011), Rams (2012-2014), and Seahawks (2018-2020). He has not called plays for the Jaguars this year and has been Lawrence's defacto quarterbacks coach this year, but Bevell expressed confidence in his ability and experience on Monday. 

"I think it helps us in a lot of ways. No. 1, it helps me take more on of the head coach role that I’m being asked to do, with that added responsibility. But also, we have another really accomplished play caller in our midst," Bevell said. "We’ll be able to let Brian take an opportunity at it and put his own personality into the offense as well. We’ll be obviously in constant communication, we game plan together a lot anyways. So, I’m really confident and happy that I’m going to be able to turn that to him.”