The teachers, and the tragedy, that made Jaguars head coach Liam Coen
November 6, 2025
The teachers, and the tragedy, that made Jaguars head coach Liam Coen
7 comments
> Liam wrote one more note to his mother, in the form of a tattoo on his back: “If tears could build a stairway and memories were a lane, I would walk up to Heaven and bring you back again.”
I’m not crying, I’m good…. how’re y’all doing today?
I have a few friends that went to high school with him. From everything they said, he’s a genuinely good guy.
Can anybody paste the article?
I did this via mobile, but I think I got it all.
Liam Coen slipped the note under his mother’s bedroom door.
The night before, he had ducked out of a party at a friend’s house for an hour-long bonding session with the most caring, beautiful soul in his life.
He and his mother, Beth, had spoken about love and family, about positivity and resilience, about grappling with the throes of adversity and conquering challenges through care and compassion.
It was, as Liam describes, their most lucid conversation in years. So Liam wrote a note that, in many ways, continued that conversation. On a frigid morning in Rhode Island, he delivered it in what had become their usual fashion.
Beth never got to read it. By the time it slid under the door, she was already gone.
Every facet of Liam Coen’s personality has been on full display during his first nine months as Jacksonville Jaguars head coach. With a 5-3 record, he has already helped them eclipse their win total from last season, thanks to high-profile victories over the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers, and his innate ability to connect with his staff and players has been evident in postgame locker-room settings.
He has also drawn attention for his covert departure from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, along with a spirited postgame confrontation with San Francisco 49ers defensive coordinator Robert Saleh, who attempted to rattle Coen days earlier with public allegations of sign stealing. Coen, though, has endured far worse, and his upbringing — molded by a family of coaches and educators — built him to handle anything the football world can throw at him.
Liam’s father, Tim, was the first head coach at Division III Salve Regina University in Newport, R.I., among other jobs, and a teacher. Like Liam, Tim was the son of a hard-nosed football coach. Tim’s love story with Beth began around 1980 at Second Beach, where Tim was a lifeguard and Beth was a regular.
Beth was a beloved history teacher at South Kingstown (R.I.) High. She had a passion for art, served on the board of directors at the Holocaust Museum in Providence and ran two marathons. She was serious about education, forcing Liam to do his homework — multiple times if necessary — until he got it right, after which she’d stay up, sometimes until 1 a.m., to work on her lesson plan.
Beth had a throng of students who deeply cared for her. She wasn’t a natural athlete but she had profound determination. When she decided to train for marathons, she’d wake up at 4 a.m. to scatter bottles of water around her route — her training typically came at odd hours, as she was often solely responsible for Liam when Tim was off coaching.
“She would do anything for Liam,” Tim Coen says. “She loved Liam. She loved Liam. She was a great mom. Couldn’t have been a better mom.”
Tim’s father, Phil Coen, was a no-nonsense captain and All-American guard at Boston College, and later an assistant coach at Brown University; his tenacity spilled over to his son.
Tim had a heart attack at 22. While recovering in a Florida hospital, he instructed the nurses to alert him when his parents arrived so he could prop himself up in bed, as if nothing had happened. When Liam was 11, he needed stitches after cutting the index finger on his throwing hand with a can opener. Liam was concerned the stitches would pop out while he was preparing to pitch in his baseball game, so Tim grabbed a pair of scissors and cut them out himself.
Tim had a softer side as well. When they lived in North Providence, he visited the University of Rhode Island, Brown and other local schools to ask for old football cleats, equipment and clothes to deliver to kids who didn’t have the means to buy their own gear. If his players needed money, Tim tried to find them a job or paid them to paint a fence or do yardwork.
Tim’s players and Beth’s students were always at the house. Sometimes they were Liam’s babysitters. Other times, when they weren’t needed, they were just there to play basketball and hang out. It was a nurturing environment for Liam, who felt connected to Tim’s football teams, befriending players and studying film with his dad. And when Tim was Liam’s head coach at Providence’s La Salle Academy, the relationship evolved from father-son to coach-quarterback as well.
Along the way, Liam absorbed coaching lessons from his father. He watched as Tim fostered personal connections with his players — he genuinely cared about them. The more they recognized that, the harder they played for him.
“Your perspective is constantly being molded on what you want your dream to look like,” Liam says. “My dream was to be in the NFL. I wanted to be a player, but I always knew I wanted to coach.”
Liam turns 40 on Saturday. Recently, while walking through the Jaguars’ weight room to his office at the Miller Electric Center, he stopped and took a moment, glancing around at the sprawling glass windows that encased the hallway and welcomed the warm Florida sun.
“So this,” Coen said, “was the dream.”
Coen was a record-setting quarterback at UMass from 2004 to 2008 when the program was a Division I-AA powerhouse under coach Don Brown. His goal of reaching the NFL as a player came to a halt due to acute elbow tendinitis, so the pivot to coaching came sooner than anticipated.
He traversed the New England circuit — Brown, URI, UMass, Maine and (very briefly) Holy Cross — coaching players who were fortunate to get more than a couple pairs of shorts from budget-conscious athletic departments. As Maine’s offensive coordinator, Coen had just five assistant coaches on his side of the ball. They worked long hours for small paychecks, knowing it was their only path to success.
Considering New England winters, work was usually the only thing to do — but make no mistake, Coen and his fellow coaches had a blast. The jobs lacked glamour, but for a collection of football junkies, a chance to bury themselves in the game they loved was everything.
Coen got his break with the Los Angeles Rams in 2018, as former UMass colleague Shane Waldron recommended him to head coach Sean McVay. Just like that, on the heels of a decade-long tour through the northeast, Coen was in L.A. After working his way up with the Rams and a couple stints as the offensive coordinator at the University of Kentucky, Coen really started to distinguish himself in 2024 as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers offensive coordinator.
Everywhere Coen traveled, the football fields remained 100 yards long. The stage and the spotlight changed, but his approach stayed the same.
7 comments
> Liam wrote one more note to his mother, in the form of a tattoo on his back: “If tears could build a stairway and memories were a lane, I would walk up to Heaven and bring you back again.”
I’m not crying, I’m good…. how’re y’all doing today?
I have a few friends that went to high school with him. From everything they said, he’s a genuinely good guy.
Can anybody paste the article?
I did this via mobile, but I think I got it all.
Liam Coen slipped the note under his mother’s bedroom door.
The night before, he had ducked out of a party at a friend’s house for an hour-long bonding session with the most caring, beautiful soul in his life.
He and his mother, Beth, had spoken about love and family, about positivity and resilience, about grappling with the throes of adversity and conquering challenges through care and compassion.
It was, as Liam describes, their most lucid conversation in years. So Liam wrote a note that, in many ways, continued that conversation. On a frigid morning in Rhode Island, he delivered it in what had become their usual fashion.
Beth never got to read it. By the time it slid under the door, she was already gone.
Every facet of Liam Coen’s personality has been on full display during his first nine months as Jacksonville Jaguars head coach. With a 5-3 record, he has already helped them eclipse their win total from last season, thanks to high-profile victories over the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers, and his innate ability to connect with his staff and players has been evident in postgame locker-room settings.
He has also drawn attention for his covert departure from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, along with a spirited postgame confrontation with San Francisco 49ers defensive coordinator Robert Saleh, who attempted to rattle Coen days earlier with public allegations of sign stealing. Coen, though, has endured far worse, and his upbringing — molded by a family of coaches and educators — built him to handle anything the football world can throw at him.
Liam’s father, Tim, was the first head coach at Division III Salve Regina University in Newport, R.I., among other jobs, and a teacher. Like Liam, Tim was the son of a hard-nosed football coach. Tim’s love story with Beth began around 1980 at Second Beach, where Tim was a lifeguard and Beth was a regular.
Beth was a beloved history teacher at South Kingstown (R.I.) High. She had a passion for art, served on the board of directors at the Holocaust Museum in Providence and ran two marathons. She was serious about education, forcing Liam to do his homework — multiple times if necessary — until he got it right, after which she’d stay up, sometimes until 1 a.m., to work on her lesson plan.
Beth had a throng of students who deeply cared for her. She wasn’t a natural athlete but she had profound determination. When she decided to train for marathons, she’d wake up at 4 a.m. to scatter bottles of water around her route — her training typically came at odd hours, as she was often solely responsible for Liam when Tim was off coaching.
“She would do anything for Liam,” Tim Coen says. “She loved Liam. She loved Liam. She was a great mom. Couldn’t have been a better mom.”
Tim’s father, Phil Coen, was a no-nonsense captain and All-American guard at Boston College, and later an assistant coach at Brown University; his tenacity spilled over to his son.
Tim had a heart attack at 22. While recovering in a Florida hospital, he instructed the nurses to alert him when his parents arrived so he could prop himself up in bed, as if nothing had happened. When Liam was 11, he needed stitches after cutting the index finger on his throwing hand with a can opener. Liam was concerned the stitches would pop out while he was preparing to pitch in his baseball game, so Tim grabbed a pair of scissors and cut them out himself.
Tim had a softer side as well. When they lived in North Providence, he visited the University of Rhode Island, Brown and other local schools to ask for old football cleats, equipment and clothes to deliver to kids who didn’t have the means to buy their own gear. If his players needed money, Tim tried to find them a job or paid them to paint a fence or do yardwork.
Tim’s players and Beth’s students were always at the house. Sometimes they were Liam’s babysitters. Other times, when they weren’t needed, they were just there to play basketball and hang out. It was a nurturing environment for Liam, who felt connected to Tim’s football teams, befriending players and studying film with his dad. And when Tim was Liam’s head coach at Providence’s La Salle Academy, the relationship evolved from father-son to coach-quarterback as well.
Along the way, Liam absorbed coaching lessons from his father. He watched as Tim fostered personal connections with his players — he genuinely cared about them. The more they recognized that, the harder they played for him.
“Your perspective is constantly being molded on what you want your dream to look like,” Liam says. “My dream was to be in the NFL. I wanted to be a player, but I always knew I wanted to coach.”
Liam turns 40 on Saturday. Recently, while walking through the Jaguars’ weight room to his office at the Miller Electric Center, he stopped and took a moment, glancing around at the sprawling glass windows that encased the hallway and welcomed the warm Florida sun.
“So this,” Coen said, “was the dream.”
Coen was a record-setting quarterback at UMass from 2004 to 2008 when the program was a Division I-AA powerhouse under coach Don Brown. His goal of reaching the NFL as a player came to a halt due to acute elbow tendinitis, so the pivot to coaching came sooner than anticipated.
He traversed the New England circuit — Brown, URI, UMass, Maine and (very briefly) Holy Cross — coaching players who were fortunate to get more than a couple pairs of shorts from budget-conscious athletic departments. As Maine’s offensive coordinator, Coen had just five assistant coaches on his side of the ball. They worked long hours for small paychecks, knowing it was their only path to success.
Considering New England winters, work was usually the only thing to do — but make no mistake, Coen and his fellow coaches had a blast. The jobs lacked glamour, but for a collection of football junkies, a chance to bury themselves in the game they loved was everything.
Coen got his break with the Los Angeles Rams in 2018, as former UMass colleague Shane Waldron recommended him to head coach Sean McVay. Just like that, on the heels of a decade-long tour through the northeast, Coen was in L.A. After working his way up with the Rams and a couple stints as the offensive coordinator at the University of Kentucky, Coen really started to distinguish himself in 2024 as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers offensive coordinator.
Everywhere Coen traveled, the football fields remained 100 yards long. The stage and the spotlight changed, but his approach stayed the same.
I did an archive of the article [https://web.archive.org/web/20251106143437/https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6780341/2025/11/06/jaguars-head-coach-liam-coen-family-mom-death/?source=emp_shared_article](https://web.archive.org/web/20251106143437/https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6780341/2025/11/06/jaguars-head-coach-liam-coen-family-mom-death/?source=emp_shared_article)
should be much easier to read especially on mobile
I would run through a brick wall for Liam Coen