JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Refreshed after a week off, the Jaguars and head coach Liam Coen went back to work on Monday with a few new “tweaks” as they try and get out of a funk.
The Jaguars did a deep dive into offense, defense and special teams over the bye week, and Coen said there were a few things that they changed that will help Jacksonville. The Jaguars started out 4-1 and had a massive win on “Monday Night Football” over the Chiefs to give Coen’s first season an infusion of momentum.
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Since that game, the Jaguars have struggled mightily with basic things like blocking on the offensive line and moving the ball on the ground. Combine those with loads of dropped passes and a weekly onslaught of penalties, and Jacksonville feels like it has regressed significantly. Coen said Jacksonville scrutinized everything from the first seven games and identified things that it needed to fix.
That included things in the ground game and on defense.
“So you look at all those things and so much of it goes into it, these guys did a lot of work as a staff from a report 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,” Coen said.
Jacksonville (4-3) returns to the field Sunday (4:05 p.m.) when it visits the Las Vegas Raiders (2-5) trying to get back to the business of winning.
“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?’ And then where are the things that we have done well? What are the things we’ve done well that we can now just change the presentation to the opponent to be able to continue to have success doing,” Coen said.
Jacksonville didn’t make any big moves during the bye week, but the Athletic’s Dianna Russini reported on Saturday that the Jaguars were “listening” to calls on receiver Brian Thomas Jr. She also said it was “highly unlikely” that the team would deal away the second-year player.
Coen addressed that Monday, saying the team wasn’t looking to do anything with Thomas.
“We have no plans on moving Brian Thomas Jr. at all. Saw something about that over the weekend but I talked to him for a good amount of time this morning and it was just a good reset for a lot of these guys to come in fresh, 4-3, with everything ahead of us,” Coen said.
“Regardless, good, bad or indifferent, what’s happened in the first seven games, we all have an opportunity to write a narrative. We own the narrative and so I got a lot of confidence in them. I really do believe that we can turn the corner and get better in the pass game that way.”
Thomas’ regression from Year 1 to 2 has been a significant storyline. He has six dropped passes, according to Pro Football Focus, a total that’s more than his entire rookie season. Jacksonville leads the league with 25 dropped passes, according to Pro Football Reference, nine more than any other team.
As Thomas, Parker Washington and Dyami Brown have struggled this season, rookie Travis Hunter is coming off the best game of his career. Hunter had seven catches for 107 yards and a touchdown against the Rams.
The coaching staff has oscillated from week to week on how to best use Hunter. The returns so far have been largely underwhelming for the No. 2 pick in the draft as he tries to play on both sides of the ball. His play before the bye week should give the Jaguars confidence that they can keep adding more and more to Hunter’s plate out of necessity on offense.
“I think you look at the end of the last game against the Rams with he and Trevor building on a connection and making some plays towards the end of the game,” Coen said. “Obviously, it was a little out of reach at the time, but you’re still seeing competitive throws and catches in live action, which is something we’ve needed. So, you definitely look at how much more can he handle, how much more can we put him in a position to be successful on both offense and defense and what does that look like? So, it definitely gave us an opportunity as a staff to look at how we can continue to use him.”