Liam Coen on Team Approach Following Bye Week | Jacksonville Jaguars

Liam Coen on Team Approach Following Bye Week | Jacksonville Jaguars

lead off take during the by take a look back at I guess the first games of the season. Did you see anything different from the team or kind of take anything away from it? Yeah, I think you know we did uh pretty extensive self scout in all three phases and um you you look at when especially offensively you’re on schedule usually good things have occurred and when you’re off schedule it’s tough sledding and uh we’ve got a couple you know different tweaks of how we want to try to get guys the ball and and get the get our best players the ball in space and um how to stay a little bit better ahead of the chains and exec executing first and second down a little bit better so that third downs are a little bit more manageable. And um we also looked at okay uh pass rush and coverage in terms of limiting explosives but also getting home a little bit more as well. So you look at all those things and and so much of it goes into it. These guys did a lot of work as a staff from a report and um and communicating that now to the players and some of those things that you want to end up getting maybe tweaked, but we’re not going to go and reinvent the wheel. How important is it to make sure that you maximize that by not just the self scout part, but also the guys kind of get a chance to reset a little bit. Yeah, it’s huge. Um we we obviously had some guys a little nicked and you go through some physical football games in the early part of the season and so you need it. Everybody needs a reset and an opportunity to get away from it. Um, spend some quality time with family and friends and have that nice little mental and physical reset to now come into the building. Uh, with everything ahead of us, when you when you do meet as a staff last week and look at everything, how much is it confirming what you thought or how much is it sort of groundbreaking? No, not much is groundbreaking. Like you have a feeling, right? and and what comes out is um you know statistics. You’re looking at data but also the big picture of um you know every game’s its own entity like the stats don’t always align with the flow of a football game and what actually could have occurred or did occur within games. Um, so so much of it is looking at it from a big picture lens, but then dissecting individually per side of ball. Okay, where can we improve, right? And then where are the things that we have done well? What are the things we’ve done well that we can now just all right change the presentation to the opponent to be able to continue to have success doing? Do you have a go ahead? Did seven games with Travis kind of give you the sample size you needed to see how maybe you wanted to look at his plan, tweak it or whatever? Yeah, I think so. I think you look at the end of the last game against the Rams with he and Trevor building on a connection and um making some plays towards the end of the game. Obviously was a little out of reach at the time, but um you’re still seeing competitive throws and catches um in live action, which is something we’ve needed. So, um, you know, you definitely look at how much more can he handle, how much more can we, um, put him in a position to be successful on both offense and defense, and what what does that look like? So, it definitely gave us an opportunity as a staff to look at how we can continue to to use him. How physical do you want these practices to be coming out of the buy, making sure they’re ready for the Raiders? Yeah, we’ll tweak um our practice a little where we’ll go pads on Wednesday this week just because there was no game this past Sunday. Um so we’ll go pads on Wednesday uh be able to get these guys going a little bit earlier on in the week and then just go spiders on Thursday, helmets on Fridays. Today will be a helmets practice about an hour on the grass. Just get these guys back up and running hearing the calls again. Fundamentals, a lot of individual work. We’ll do a lineman assignment and just get them buzzing a little bit. Do you look at when you’re doing your self scout stuff, do you look at as a whole or do you break down, you know, I’m gonna spend two hours looking at what’s Trevor’s done and then two hours looking at what PTN’s done, stuff like that. Yeah, it’s more as a whole, but then it does get broken down to okay, run, pass, protection, and so you’re end up watching it a little bit more detailed that way as a staff where you’re saying, okay, run game, these are stats by run concept. These are the stats or what show on the tape specifically versus stats. What are we best at? What is our runner best at? What is our O line best at? is our receivers best at running and uh what is the quarterback ultimately most comfortable doing? So you get that information when you break it by all right what is our run data and stats on mid zone wide zone draws transportations you get a little bit more detail in the weeds of what those things that our players do best when you watch it that way. Was Trevor a guy that he needs to see it several times in a game situation before it really kind of um you know I think no I I think that’s that’s fair for you know anytime you you may see something that fits in a game plan that you can take advantage of on the defense but maybe it’s like a one-time play call or you you want to get something off versus a specific look and you may not you may be hunting that look all game and not see it till a different time where you don’t have that play called. So, we’re trying to get away from some of the game plan specific plays or looks and hey man, let’s try to go operate and execute our core principles, foundations, concepts because the more times you rep something, the the better off you are at any position. Especially though the quarterback position because it’s not just okay, we want to throw it to number one because we want to manipulate the defense some way. Well, what if that’s not open and you dialed that up for a different look and you just didn’t get the right look you wanted? Well, now what’s the other reads? Where does the checkown go? And if you start creating new every week, I don’t think that’s usually a good thing for the quarterback. Tough slim for Brian Thomas throughout this season with the drops and other things. Um, I’m sure you’ve tried a lot of different things. Is how optimistic are you that the light will turn on for him? Yeah, I am very optimistic. Um, you know, we have we have no plans on moving Brian Thomas Jr. uh at all. Saw something about that over the weekend. Um, but all I mean I talked to him for a good amount of time this morning and um it’s just a good reset for a lot of these guys to to come in fresh and three with everything ahead of us. Um, regard good, bad or indifferent what’s happened in the first seven games, we all have an opportunity to to write a narrative. We own the narrative and so uh I got a lot of confidence in them. I really do believe that uh we can turn the corner and get better in the pass game that way. Is there something you can put your finger on in terms of why the screen game hasn’t been as effective? Great question. We just got done talking screens today. Um, you know, I think it’s a combination of a when they’re being called and the timing of them. Like every screen has a little bit of a different count to it. Is it a one count, two count, three count screen? Um, you look at screens around the league in terms of when they’re being called, you you definitely there’s a trend there. Um, and so I think it’s a combination. We have athletic offensive linemen and skilled players that can do some things in space. We have got to improve there, but uh, it’s just like anything you’re trying to improve, but not go reinvent the wheel with them. I think there’s some fundamentals and techniques we can improve. Are there tells like do the players is there something they’re doing that is a tell from what you’re seeing? No. Um, I think again it’s probably some some crap luck on some of them. There’s some uh ones that if you know it’s second and 20 and you’re uh running a screen. I mean there’s probably an idea by the defense if they’re yelling screen draw, you know, knowing that you’re trying to get half back or whatever it is. So, um, you know, I do we were a very good screen team last year in Tampa. um you know there was definitely maybe you know a little bit more time on task I would say throughout the week in practice and so those are things that we’re looking at okay if we want to improve in these areas we need to put time on task in these areas so in the run game Liam um how tough is it to be stubborn with it and and you’ve said a couple times maybe you got away from it but is it uh even if it’s not working do you do you feel like you still have to keep calling it? Yeah, I gota call more runs in general when we’re when we run the football, you know, we’re a little bit more balanced. Anytime you’re more balanced, um, you have the defense on their toes, you know, so it’s a matter of, like you said, winning first and second down, you start drives and you have a run, you get a hold and you’re first and 20. Now, well, I’m probably not going to run it on first, you know, who knows? But you’re trying to just look for the balance and when you’re able to run the football you see around the league all day yesterday points being scored and um you know when you can run the ball and be effective running the football it’s something that we’ve got to get back to being able to do a little bit more. You talked about when we get the offense off to a quicker start. Is it a process for you as a play caller figuring out guess what kind of plays guys need to see or feel early to get them settled in? Absolutely. We looked at that as well is, you know, the starting fast element and games that we’ve started fast on offense. We’ve been able to um I don’t want to say control the game, but just have a a better feel early. Gets our guys in a rhythm early, gets the quarterback confidence early. Um you know, so we’re looking at how can we kind of tweak, you know, practice later in the week a little bit to say, “All right, hey, these are the openers guys on Friday. maybe get it to them a little bit early or whatever it is so that hey they have a little bit better idea of what’s going to get called earlier in the game and try to get some of those things repped uh on Fridays. You were a player. How much did you appreciate when the coach said that play called boy did I screw that thing up and did that stick with you? It did. Um you know I thought when I was a player Don Brown did it a lot as as the head coach at UMass. Um he did a really nice job of just man we we asked them to be accountable right the players we want accountability from the players not to say it’s their fault it’s just because then we can um fix it and move on when you just say like yeah that was me I I I got to fix that and so then you can there’s an openness now to learn and grow from the mistake and everybody can learn from that mistake it’s not you’re not correcting the player, you’re correcting the play. And ultimately, everybody can learn something from that. And then I thought Sean did a nice job of it as well when I when I was in LA in terms of like, yeah, there’s a standard of execution that we hold and that we have and that everybody is held to and we’re no different as coaches. And so we’ve um I just think that when you can put a little bit on yourself and and show like guys like I got to you know this isn’t good enough by me either um it continues to hold each other accountable with Greg Houston has his knowledge of the scheme lead to a bigger role this week. Yeah I think like camp talked about this morning that Greg’s getting more and more comfortable. He did have some really good matchups last week. He had, you know, a couple balls caught on his way where he’s maybe a little deep in in his zone, but man, when he’s he’s getting more and more comfortable. You saw him in man coverage a few times on Devonte and have some really good reps. So, I think um you know, you’re starting to see a little bit more comfort level. He’s very uh engaged in the meetings. Like the guy sits on the edge of his chair, he’s looking right at you in the eyes. You can tell it’s important to him. So, uh, got a lot of lot of belief that’ll continue to improve. How important is it for the defensive tackles to come out of the buy and give you a little bit more? We need it. You know, we we need to, you know, we’ve looked at, okay, how do we help them on on early downs, create more of an edge, and get some favorable matchups. We’ve looked at um in the known passing situations, where are we putting these guys and how can we continue or how can we put them in better positions to be successful and get more ops on the quarterback. And um also th those guys have got to continue to do it on their own as well, right? If you’re going to rush with some four, we got to go win. And so uh we’re going to make an emphasis of it and continue to coach the heck out of it. But we did do a little bit of uh think tanking as a staff over the week on how we can do that and creating our angles and matchups and um also being able to and base defense, you know, how are we moving some of these pieces around in order to give us favorable matchups on who we think we can win on versus the O line. For you during the bye-week to kind of take a step back and see what other people what other teams are kind of doing around the league. Oh, that’s yeah, I mean I probably wa I watched every game of around the NFL last week, you know, during the time off and so um you know, you’re trying to look at teams that you’re I guess you could say quote unquote similar to in ways, but also taking around a look around the league at other teams that maybe aren’t using the similar system or the same system and just see what uh trends are going around. And uh it’s not just about that. It’s like, all right, if you’re playing a coverage cover three, right, we’re going to see cover version of cover three almost weekly. Well, what concepts around the league are uh attacking that coverage or cover four or cover six? It’s not like, all right, we want to steal what they is, right? What are good concepts that are continuing to show up around the league that attack people’s core, you know, principles and fundamentals and techniques? When you said last, every game around the league, you meant every game since week one or every game last week? Last week. Yeah, I just did the weeks, you know, last week. Um, you know, I typically do that throughout the week like Monday, Tuesday, try to get a little bit ahead of around the league tape. Um, you know, we get we do a great job. The video staff and and our offensive assistants and defensive assistants will some somewhat break down the around the league. you know, we use PFF data to be able to All right, let me just pull up all the explosive passes from this week around the league, explosive runs, red zone touchdowns, things like that that help you sort it a little bit better so you’re not just sitting there like watching every play. Um, so thank God for that because I’d be lost. Thanks,

Jaguars HC Liam Coen speaks to the media on Monday of Week 9 during the 2025 NFL Season.

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