Dysfunction followed the Jaguars from the field into the offseason. After winning the division and making the playoffs in Doug Pederson‘s first year as head coach in 2022, the Jaguars failed to replicate that success, missing the playoffs in 2023 and then finishing with a 4-13 record last season, which led to Pederson being let go. Yet, the Jaguars decided they wanted to retain general manager Trent Baalke, and that’s where the chaos crept in. The team seemingly struck out on their top head coaching candidates, including Liam Coen, who voluntarily removed his name from consideration and returned to be the offensive coordinator in Tampa Bay. The Jaguars then promptly did an about-face. Owner Shad Khan fired Baalke and personally called Coen to ask if he’d reconsider. Later that week, Coen had signed on to become the next head coach for the Jaguars, but can the organization put the dysfunction of the last calendar year behind them and get back into playoff contention?
2024 Jacksonville Jaguars Stats (Rank)
Points per game: 18.8 (26th)
Total yards per game: 306.2 (25th)
Plays per game: 58.4 (32nd)
Dropbacks per game: 37.7 (23rd)
Dropback EPA per play: 0 (22nd)
Rush attempts per game: 24.4 (26th)
Rush EPA per play: -0.07 (14th)
Can a new coaching staff give these Jags more bite?
The biggest question facing the Jaguars this season is whether Liam Coen can carry over some of his offensive creativity in his first head coaching gig. In his one season as offensive coordinator with the Bucs, the team finished third in total yards, fourth in points scored, and fifth in propback EPA per play. Under Coen’s tutelage, Baker Mayfield had career highs in completion percentage (71.4%), passing yards (4,500 yards), and passing touchdowns (41). That was all with Chris Godwin out for more than half the season and Mike Evans also missing three games. In contrast, the Jaguars ranked 25th in yards per game, 26th in points per game, 19th in EPA per play, and 26th in turnovers per game. They are counting on Coen to revitalize their offense, which features some strong playmakers; however, they are also counting on Coen to provide more stability than he has recently, given that Coen has coached in five different places over the last five years, moving from the Rams in 2020 to the University of Kentucky in 2021, then back to the Rams in 2022, and back to Kentucky in 2023, and then off to Tampa Bay last year.
Passing Game
QB: Trevor Lawrence, Nick Mullens, John Wolford
WR: Brian Thomas Jr., Parker Washington, Trenton Irwin
WR: Travis Hunter, Joshua Cephus
WR: Dyami Brown, Austin Trammell
TE: Brenton Strange, Johnny Mundt, Quintin Morris
The passing game will live and die on the arm of Trevor Lawrence. After being hailed as a generational quarterback prospect when he was drafted first overall in 2021, Lawrence has yet to establish a consistent level of production at the NFL level. He led the league in interceptions as a rookie but seemed to bounce back in 2022, throwing for 4,113 yards and 25 touchdowns and making the Pro Bowl. He took a step back again in 2023 and then continued to regress in 2024, posting his worst completion rate and interception rate since his rookie season. He also threw for a career-low 204.5 yards per game last year and had the highest sack rate of any season in his NFL career while passing for 2,045 yards with 11 touchdowns and seven interceptions in 10 games. After an offseason to heal his shoulder, Lawrence is hoping to revitalize his career in the same way Baker Mayfield did under Coen last season. With no real backup option behind him, Lawrence is going to get every opportunity to prove his worth.
Of course, the Jaguars helped him this offseason by trading the fifth pick plus a second-round pick, fourth-round pick, and 2026 first-round pick to move up to second overall and draft Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter. The 6’1″, 185-pound Hunter won the Fred Biletnikoff Award for college football’s best wide receiver in 2024 after compiling 1,258 receiving yards on 96 catches with 15 touchdowns. There’s no questioning Hunter’s playmaking ability, but it’s been a long time since we’ve seen a player enter the NFL and plan to be a starter on both sides of the ball. Not only will that be an immense physical toll (Hunter played 1,481 snaps last season, which was nearly 300 more than any other player in college), but Hunter will need to learn two vastly different positions in an NFL playbook while adjusting to the speed and physicality of professional football. Given all of that, it might be fair to expect Hunter to be more of a boom-or-bust offensive player in the first few months of the season.
However, the good news for both Hunter and Lawrence is that the Jaguars don’t need Hunter to be a superstar right from the jump because they already have a budding one in Brian Thomas Jr. The wide receiver out of LSU had 1,282 receiving yards on 87 catches (133) targets in 2024 with 10 touchdowns. Thomas Jr. finally pushed over 80% of the team’s snaps in Week 9. From that point forward, he was WR11 in half-PPR formats, averaging 11.8 fantasy points per game. He also ranked in the top ten in the NFL in target rate, receiving yards, yards per route run, and yards after the catch per reception over that span. Coen has mentioned that Thomas Jr. can play all over the field, including the slot, which could mean that the Jaguars’ offense manufactures targets for the second-year receiver in a way that cements him as a WR1 in fantasy leagues.
Rounding out the Jacksonville passing attack will be Parker Washington, who had 390 receiving yards on 32 receptions with three touchdowns, and Dyami Brown, who was signed away from the Commanders after posting 308 receiving yards on 30 catches with one touchdown. Brown seemed to emerge for Washington in the playoffs, catching 14 of 18 targets for 229 yards and one touchdown in the team’s three games. Neither player should be trusted in most fantasy leagues, but they provide some depth for Lawrence and Coen to work with in 2025.
They will need that depth since Evan Engram is no longer on the roster, which means that either Brenton Strange or newly signed Quintin Morris could emerge as the primary tight end target. Strange had a solid second season in Jacksonville, with 411 receiving yards on 40 catches with two touchdowns. Last year, Coen used primarily one tight end in Tampa Bay with Cade Otton playing over 80% of snaps in all but one game he was healthy for. When Otton missed the final three games of the season, backup Payne Durham also played at least 77% of snaps in each game. That suggests Strange could be in for a large workload that puts him on the TE2 radar.
Lawrence cleaning up footwork ahead of 2025 season
Patrick Daugherty and Denny Carter discuss the latest news surrounding Trevor Lawrence, debating if improved footwork could lead to a better fantasy season in 2025 for the franchise quarterback of Liam Coen’s Jaguars.
Running Game
RB: Travis Etienne Jr., Tank Bigsby, Bhayshul Tuten
OL (L-R): Walker Little, Ezra Cleveland, Robert Hainsey, Patrick Mekari, Anton Harrison
The Jaguars’ running game was a bit of a confusing mess in 2024. They ranked 26th overall in rushing yards, 18th in yards per attempt, and 15th in expected points added per rush. That was with no running back playing over 74% of snaps in any one game. Travis Etienne Jr. was the only running back to surpass a 70% snap share in any game during the 2024 season, and he did it three times, but only one of them came in a game when Tank Bigsby was healthy. Etienne Jr. himself missed two games during the season and finished with 558 rushing yards (3.7 yards per carry) with two touchdowns while adding 254 receiving yards on 39 catches (52 targets). Even though the Jaguars drafted two running backs this year (fourth-rounder Bhayshul Tuten and seventh-rounder LeQuint Allen), Liam Coen has denied that the team is looking to trade away Etienne Jr. If Etienne Jr. does remain in Jacksonville, he figures to be the passing-down back in a backfield committee with Bigsby.
Bigsby didn’t settle into a full-time role until Week 7 last year. An early-season injury kept him out for Week 2 and had him playing at less than 100% for the weeks after. From Week Seven on, Bigsby took 113 total carries to 81 for Etienne Jr, and that includes Week 11, which Bigsby missed with an injury that he suffered in an abbreviated Week 10 game. On the season, Bigsby had 766 rushing yards on 168 attempts (4.6 yards per carry) with seven touchdowns; yet saw only 12 total targets in the passing game for seven catches and 54 receiving yards. That limited pass-catching role meant that Bigsby was RB33 in per-game scoring from Week 7 on and was RB44 in half-PPR scoring after the team’s Week 12 bye, averaging 7.4 fantasy points per game, which was worse than Etienne Jr.’s 7.8 points per game over that same stretch.
Bigsby does have the red zone role as well, but this is an offensive line that ranked 19th in PFF’s offensive line rankings, mostly on the back of their solid pass-blocking work. The Jaguars ranked 19th in pass block win rate last season but finished 25th in run-blocking win rate. Mitch Morse and Brandon Scherff are now gone, replaced by Robert Hainsey, who appeared in 17 games for Liam Coen in Tampa Bay last year, and Patrick Mekari, who was the starting left guard for the Ravens. Much like the rest of the offensive line, Mekari has graded out far better as a pass-blocker than run-blocker last season, so it remains to be seen what Coen can change scheme-wise to create more running room for his backs. As it stands, it’s hard to trust either Etienne Jr. or Bigsby as anything more than an RB3 heading into the season, but Bigsby is the one with more upside given his redzone role.
The other name to watch here is Tuten, the rookie from Virginia Tech, who rushed for 1,159 yards on 183 carries (6.3 yards per carry) with 15 touchdowns last year. He took a step back in the receiving game, but he appears to have the skillset to fill a receiving back role if the team were to change their tune and wind up moving on from Etienne Jr. at some point this season.
2025 Jacksonville Jaguars Win Total
DraftKings Over/Under: 7.5
Pick: Over (-120)
The Jaguars finished with nine wins in 2022 and 2023, and this seems like a better team on paper. Coen has a good track record as a coach of quarterbacks, and Lawrence is a good bet to improve on his poor last two seasons. With Thomas and Hunter on the perimeter, this offense has a few key playmakers and should at least be middle-of-the-pack in terms of points scored, especially if they can figure out their running game. Even though their defense was poor in 2024, they have plenty of talent on that side of the ball with guys like Josh Hines-Allen, Arik Armstead, Travon Walker, Darnell Savage, and Tyson Campbell. If the defense can get more production out of their talented individual players, the Jaguars should hit the over here.
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