JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — If it is attainable to find out when Liam Coen first began pondering like a coach, it’d date again to the autumn of 1989.
Coen was an everyday at his father’s practices when Tim Coen was the top coach at South Kingstown Excessive Faculty in Wakefield, Rhode Island. To maintain his son occupied throughout after-practice conferences with the coaches, Tim let Liam doodle on the chalkboard.
“One of many coaches regarded down and stated, ‘Have a look at that,'” Tim Coen stated. “And we glance, and on the time we had been working the wishbone once I first began, [Liam] drew 11 guys in a wishbone formation precisely the place they had been purported to be.
“It was nice.”
Liam Coen was simply 3 years outdated on the time, and it was one of many first indicators that he was extremely excited by soccer.
Now the Jacksonville Jaguars’ first-time head coach, Coen has all the time been a soccer junkie. As a child, he watched his dad’s recreation movies as an alternative of cartoons and diagrammed performs as an alternative of constructing with Legos. Disguise and search? He’d somewhat work on diving catches together with his dad.
“That might go on and on,” Tim Coen stated. “He was like that golden retriever that you simply throw the ball to that does not cease.”
These apply days translated into Liam being named Rhode Island’s 2003 Gatorade Participant of the 12 months at La Salle Academy, setting the profession data for passing yards (11,031) and passing touchdowns (90) at UMass Amherst, and embarking on a 15-year teaching profession that features stops at UMass, the College of Kentucky, the Los Angeles Rams and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Whereas the 39-year-old has jumped from teaching job to teaching job — by no means spending greater than three consecutive seasons at any cease — he has developed a fame as one of many vivid offensive minds to return from the Sean McVay teaching tree. Now he is prepared to ascertain his personal staff playbook and tradition with the Jaguars utilizing what he has realized alongside the way in which.
“He is simply a kind of guys that will get it,” Tim Coen stated. “He was a frontrunner and a sensible quarterback. He knew why we had been working performs. It wasn’t like he simply knew the play. He knew the aim of it.”
LIAM COEN’S FIRST foray into the NFL was unofficial, however it was sufficient to get him centered on an NFL head teaching job.
Mark Whipple had been UMass’ coach from 1998 to 2003 and recruited Coen, however Whipple left UMass to grow to be the quarterbacks coach for the Pittsburgh Steelers earlier than Coen arrived.
Seven years later, Whipple was the quarterbacks coach for the Cleveland Browns, and Coen — who had saved in contact — requested if he may go to and see what it was like to teach within the NFL.
Whipple took Coen to the Browns facility over a three-day go to and let him sit in on conferences and see how the Browns ran their offseason program. Coen beloved it, Whipple stated.
“He was only a employee [and] needed to be taught in regards to the NFL and issues of that nature,” Whipple stated. “I let him come into conferences and every little thing else in spring that spring, and it form of catapulted him.”
Whipple had been following Coen’s profession — quarterbacks coach at Brown in 2010, passing recreation coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Rhode Island in 2011, and quarterbacks coach at Brown once more in 2012-13. And when UMass rehired Whipple in 2004, he employed Coen to grow to be the Minutemen’s go recreation coordinator and quarterbacks coach.
Coen’s potential to show the offense and work with the quarterbacks impressed Whipple.
“I coached [six seasons] within the NFL and so we used stuff that I realized from Mike Holmgren and Andy Reid within the go recreation,” Whipple stated. “He [Coen] simply dealt with the quarterback room rather well. I did not actually go in there and coach. I referred to as the performs, however he dealt with that scenario and taught [QB Blake Frohnapfel] the offense and simply did a extremely, actually good job.”
Whipple stated the gamers responded effectively to Coen due to his understanding of various offenses, his background as a quarterback, his easy method and his genuineness.
“He is sincere, initially,” Whipple stated. “After which gamers can really feel that good deal with of stability in between the run and the go, and he believes in each. And I feel he stays on a good keel. However I simply suppose he is a listener. He listened to his dad. He is listened to all of the individuals he is labored with and brought issues from all of them.”
WHEN RAMS COACH McVay was on the lookout for an assistant receivers coach so as to add to his employees in 2018, Rams tight ends coach Shane Waldron urged him to name the energetic, vivid younger coach he labored with whereas he was the offensive line coach at UMass in 2014-15.
McVay listened, met with Coen and employed him to assist out receivers coach Eric Yarber. It did not take lengthy earlier than McVay was impressed, and he stopped by Coen’s workplace one night to inform him that.
“He walks by my workplace, is available in, and he is like, ‘Hey, man, you are doing a terrific job. I recognize you being right here. I am actually completely satisfied you are right here,'” Coen remembered. “Then he was out. I used to be like, ‘Oh, OK. You will be informed you are doing an excellent job on this sport.’ As a result of all the opposite locations I would been and the way I would grown up, it is like, you simply do what you are informed whenever you’re informed, and you do not do it as a result of someone’s saying good job. You do it since you’re a coach, and you have a bit of bit extra of a soldier mentality.
“It was only a completely different feeling. You are like, oh, OK, it is OK to inform guys, ‘Hey, man, I really like you.’ It is OK to open up and be truly a human being, too. And in order that was all the time the tradition the place you felt like, all proper, I’ve to be at a excessive stage whereas I am right here, however I will be myself.”
That caught with Coen all through his three-year tenure with the Rams, with the final season spent because the assistant quarterbacks coach working with Jared Goff. Coen stated that have was “like getting my Ph.D. in teaching” as a result of he realized a brand new method of being a frontrunner from McVay.
“After I walked into that constructing in 2018, I had by no means felt something like that earlier than,” Coen stated. “Simply the continuity, the positivity … like, ‘Man, how are you?’ It truly actually meant one thing. I simply felt like [McVay] stepped in that constructing, he was actually himself each single day.
“… If all people does that, good issues sometimes occur, and also you construct good relationships, and that is what he is all the time finished.”
McVay additionally strengthened what Coen realized from his father and Whipple in regards to the significance of an offensive system that creates confusion.
“I get to the Rams and I hear the precise phrase of the phantasm of complexity: Identical performs, however we’re making them simply look completely different [by using different formations, motions and misdirection],” Coen stated.
He left the Rams in 2022 to take a playcalling job on the College of Kentucky. However he returned to Los Angeles one season later as a result of McVay referred to as once more and requested him to interchange Kevin O’Connell — who was employed because the Minnesota Vikings’ head coach — as offensive coordinator. Coen has stated that working with McVay once more was a chance he could not go up, despite the fact that McVay remained the playcaller.
The Rams went 5-12 that season largely because of accidents to quarterback Matthew Stafford, receiver Cooper Kupp and defensive sort out Aaron Donald. 4 quarterbacks began video games for the Rams in 2022, together with Baker Mayfield, who was claimed off waivers from the Carolina Panthers in December.
“Liam and I went by way of what was, I’ve talked about it earlier than, probably the most difficult yr that I’ve ever had in teaching,” McVay stated. “And on the time it was not enjoyable, however I feel we might each say a lot development occurred for us each having to undergo some actually exhausting stuff … I do know that was actually exhausting on him, and I may have finished a a lot better job of being the chief that our staff however [also] he deserved because the offensive coordinator.
“We’re so much nearer for having gone by way of it. It made us each stronger.”
IN JANUARY 2024, Buccaneers head coach Todd Bowles wanted a alternative for offensive coordinator Dave Canales, whom Carolina had employed as its head coach. After interviewing seven candidates, he selected Coen, partly due to his earlier relationship with Mayfield whereas they had been with the Rams — but in addition due to Coen’s expertise working with McVay.
Bowles was impressed with how thorough Coen was in explaining the offense he needed to run and the way he would adapt if it wasn’t working.
“It is not simply [scheme],” Bowles stated at Coen’s introductory information convention. “Everyone’s going to have a scheme coming in. It is not the scheme that pulls you to him. It is understanding your scheme, after which if somebody stops it, then what do you do? Are you able to suppose after that?
“And may you slot in as effectively with the gamers and the coaches and the tradition now we have on our staff? And that takes some time to do. Except you undergo fairly a number of guys, you are not going to essentially know. You possibly can guess, however when you undergo all that, and as soon as I went by way of that with Liam, I knew he was the correct match, so it was very straightforward to rent him.”
Coen helped Mayfield put collectively the perfect season of his profession — 71.4% completions and 41 TD passes — and improved the Bucs’ floor recreation from the worst within the NFL to top-of-the-line with assist from a pair of rookies in heart Graham Barton and working again Bucky Irving. Tampa completed fourth within the NFL in dashing (149.2 yards per recreation) one season after ending final (88.8).
Earlier than the 2024 season even started, Mayfield was praising Coen’s scheme, notably the liberty and choices it gives the quarterback on the line of scrimmage. Mayfield stated throughout coaching camp he by no means felt handcuffed on the line of scrimmage and all the time had a solution to what the protection was displaying.
“Liam taught the sport of soccer to all of our offensive guys and he helped me out tremendously with pre-snap changes and with the ability to remove and course of info rapidly,” Mayfield stated. “And so Trevor [Lawrence is] going to have a man that is actually going to develop into him and lean into that and assist him out. And never simply on the sector however off the sector.”
Lawrence stated the identical factor after the Jaguars’ first organized staff exercise on Could 19.
“I actually like [that the offense] has lots of solutions,” he stated. “It is nice. I imply, it places so much on the gamers. It’s important to know your stuff, however it provides you all of the solutions. You do not really feel such as you’re caught in a play that is not arrange for achievement.
“It is positively in contrast to any system that I’ve realized earlier than.”
Jaguars heart Robert Hainsey, who was a backup in Tampa Bay final season, appreciated the way in which Coen was prepared to adapt to what the Bucs did effectively.
“One factor he does rather well is he focuses on our strengths as gamers,” Hainsey stated.
“I feel that is an enormous attribute for a soccer coach to have. You need to have the ability to hearken to your gamers and put them in the perfect place to win.”
NOW IN HIS first alternative as a head coach, Coen is aware of how necessary establishing a tradition is — particularly on a staff that was missing it beforehand. It is why he is utilizing a 2010 College of California-Berkeley analysis research to assist him do it.
A pair of scientists studied each staff within the NBA over the course of the 2008-09 season and decided that the groups that had gamers who touched one another probably the most — high-fives, pats on the again, hugs, and many others. — received probably the most.
Coen referred to as it the ability of contact and says it’s a important a part of staff chemistry.
“You simply have a look at connection, and these days connection is so exhausting to really create as a result of a lot of our lives are on a cellphone,” Coen stated. “Simply having interpersonal conversations and likewise, simply the outdated fist bump, the high-five, the chest bump — that helps carry individuals collectively.
“Like as a child whenever you had been taught to have fun. What did that seem like? That is what we’re in the end making an attempt to get to, is bringing the staff collectively, bringing the teaching employees collectively to do one thing that in the end, we have by no means finished earlier than.”
Since making the postseason in 4 consecutive seasons from 1996 to 1999, the Jaguars have had pockets of success — playoff appearances in 2005, 2007, 2017 and 2022 and back-to-back profitable seasons twice (2004-05 and 2022-23) — however nothing sustained. Solely the Cleveland Browns (17) have had extra seasons with double-digit losses than the Jaguars (15) for the reason that 2000 season started.
Forward of the 2025 season, Coen’s priorities on the sector are implementing his offense, enhancing the run recreation and getting Lawrence to play at a constantly excessive stage. If the brand new head coach makes use of what he has realized since he was 3 years outdated, there is no motive the Jaguars cannot return to competing for the playoffs.
“[Coen is a] actually sensible man, is aware of tips on how to talk, has a good way about himself with the gamers,” O’Connell stated. “And I feel that is simply going to transition to him on this position. And as I’ve informed him, it does not actually matter how anyone else has finished it, guys he is been round, whether or not it is Sean, myself, Todd [Bowles].
“He is obtained to go be himself and do it his method, and he’ll have lots of success if he does that.”
