JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Liam Coen couldn’t find the words because he never considered looking for them.
Moments after the Jacksonville Jaguars’ season abruptly ended Sunday with a 27-24 loss to the Buffalo Bills, their first-year coach addressed his team with as much pride and love as he could muster under the soul-crushing circumstances. But Coen knew they deserved to hear more and vowed to deliver it Monday morning in their final team meeting before everyone dispersed into the offseason.
Those words, he knew, needed to convey everything they were feeling: the pain of their season ending, the pride of helping reverse the fortunes of a franchise that went from 4-13 to 13-4 this year and the belief that next year could be even better. It’s not the kind of speech he’d ever given before, yet he knew his message needed to be just as real, just as unifying, as it was when he first met the team in April, and they embarked on their mission together.
But when Coen walked out of EverBank Stadium early Sunday evening with his wife, Ashley, just as they had done after every game, honing that message wasn’t top of mind.
Instead, as they climbed into their SUV, Liam’s mind started racing through the numerous calls and situations from the game that ended their eight-game winning streak, and he vented, wondering aloud about all that could have been.
Ashley has always been a sounding board as he processes in these moments, but she had to stop him this time. She had something to say that he needed to hear.
“So, I just listened for the first time in a while,” Liam said with a smile on Monday afternoon from the Jaguars’ practice facility.
Ashley heard the disappointment coming from her husband and felt it herself, but she didn’t want him to wander so deeply into the result that he missed the significance of the journey they took to get there. Over the past year, the Coens have found a home and embraced their new community in Jacksonville. They’ve instilled a genuine family atmosphere in the team building, where Liam’s father, Tim Coen, is a daily fixture, and others are welcomed with open arms.
Along the way, as the care and respect became mutual between Liam and his players, they stacked wins on top of their belief, and there’s rarely been so much optimism about the direction of the Jaguars entering an offseason.
“That perspective,” Ashley said, “I was like, ‘We’re just getting started here.’”
Upon hearing that, Liam redirected his focus throughout the 20-minute heart-to-heart, then called Jaguars defensive coordinator Anthony Campanile, who took over the 27th-ranked scoring defense and turned it into the NFL’s No. 8 unit. The defense was dead last with eight takeaways in 2024 and ranked second this season with 31. The unit went from eighth-worst against the run to the best.
But when the Jaguars took the lead twice in the fourth quarter against the Bills, the defense couldn’t find the necessary stop to advance to the divisional round. Liam knew how Campanile would be feeling, and he wanted to interject, as Ashley had done for him.
“I knew he would be hurting,” Liam said. “So, I just called him and said, ‘Dude, now is not the time to do that. Watch the tape. Put it to bed. But you should be extremely proud of what you did this year in your first year calling plays, in your first year coordinating a defense. There’s nobody else I’d want to do it with, and it’s why I hired you. I hired you because of your personality, because of the way you pour into these guys and your staff, and we’ve got absolutely nothing to be down about.’”
Liam and Campanile, a pair of coaches’ sons, have known each other since they were working in the New England college circuit, with Liam at Maine and Campanile at Boston College. They’ve got similar personalities and struck up a friendship while intersecting at various scouting camps, and their relationship has evolved while working together for the first time in Jacksonville.
They believe firmly in coaching people, not players. And they know they can lead a professional environment with a high school sentiment.
“I’ve enjoyed every second of it,” Campanile told The Athletic earlier this season. “I’ve seen Liam invest everything he has into it, every fiber of his being into this. It’s really awesome. It really is. It’s cool as hell.”
The two spoke for about 10 minutes until Liam and Ashley arrived home, where their two sons were waiting with eight family members and close friends. Liam’s younger son, Callahan, blissfully unaware of the Jaguars’ recent misfortune, just wanted to sit with his dad until he went to bed at 7 p.m. Their older boy, Jackson, squeezed a couple of extra hours of the night, and the group fully dissipated by 10.
Liam then called offensive coordinator Grant Udinski next. He thanked Udinski for all the time and energy that he spent on the offense, which gave Liam the freedom to be a head coach. An offensive-minded coach, of course, will usually have to fight off the impulse to be hands-on with every wrinkle or problem, but Udinski gave Liam the peace of mind to handle other matters that required time.
The night wound down, and Liam had the New England Patriots’ 16-3 victory against the Los Angeles Chargers on TV in the background — unable to look away because football coaches don’t look away — while also torturing himself over what had just been lost. A win over the Bills would have seen the Jaguars and Liam, a Rhode Island native and former UMass quarterback who has maintained his fiercely loyal roots, take on the Patriots at Gillette Stadium, where Liam would have been flooded with support from so many family members and friends who still live in the area.
“We had a lot of confidence,” Liam said, “and we weren’t ready for it to be over.”
Liam fell asleep before the end of the game and reintroduced himself to the snooze button — twice — Monday morning before spending a moment with his kids, saying goodbye to Ashley and returning to the facility by 7 a.m., still searching for what was next.
“It was weird. It was an interesting morning,” Liam said. “But man, it was a weird day. You can’t quite put your finger on it because you just weren’t prepared for it to end.”
Going forward, Liam, general manager James Gladstone and the staff will run through their course of exit interviews and strategize their offseason roadmap before throttling down until the chaos of draft prep and free agency. Liam also has plans for a number of film projects to self-scout and keep up with trends around the league.
He is excited to shift into dad mode, taking his kids to the park and joining them for school activities. And he hasn’t yet had a chance to play golf in town with his father. Now that the season is over, Ashley can make plans with friends more than a few weeks in advance, which is a refreshing feeling after they’ve moved every year since meeting in 2019.
Along the offseason journey, there will be a persistent drive to find any winning edge. It might be simmering while he’s outside the team facility, but he’ll have stretches when it’s boiling over into one of his research projects.
But all of that will come in time.
Liam met with his coaching staff at 10 a.m. Monday after the loss to the Bills, and he was in his office with his dad at 10:50, still trying to figure out the right words to give to a group that smashed preseason expectations and won the franchise’s fifth division title. As he thought about what he wanted to say, he started thinking back to the ride home with Ashley, to the calls with Campanile and Udinski, to the conversations with his dad and other loved ones the night before.
Liam was reminded of the spirit of what mattered. He found the words he needed as he walked into the team auditorium at 11 a.m.
This is what he told them:
“Guys, we said all season long we weren’t going to live in the results,” he told them. “Our vision and mission this entire season, we didn’t talk about playoffs. We didn’t talk about the division, the conference or the Super Bowl. We didn’t talk about those things, and we always said we weren’t going to live in the results. We’re going to work and live through the process and see what the results would be. And we’re not going to start now.
“We are fortunate to say we raised the standard. We elevated this place in the way we want to do things on a day-to-day basis. We won more than we lost. But guys, we’ve got to get better. And we’re fortunate to know that we have a f—ing sour taste left in our mouths right now. How are we going to go find the edge this offseason, spring, summer, fall to make it so we don’t feel this way again? What’s going to be that edge? How do we go find that edge? Don’t live in this result, men.
“I’m very proud of you. I’m extremely proud to be your coach. I love you all. And I want this to be an atmosphere and place that they know that, that they know their staff in this building is doing everything in their power to put them in a position to be successful. … My parents are teachers. We coach and we teach to see our students and our players improve. We don’t coach and teach to see every student get an A-plus. We don’t coach and teach, so every class is the best class in the school. We coach and we teach to change people’s lives, to help them on their path in life and to help make a difference. (But) in this profession that we chose, the end game, the end glory, is the Lombardi. And we’re all after that, or we wouldn’t be in this room right now.”
And with those words, Liam and the Jaguars shifted their pursuit into making the most out of their first full offseason together.