JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The Jaguars want to play physical, balanced football week after week.
They accomplished that in their opener and want to build off that against a much better opponent this week.
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The Jaguars handled Carolina in the opener, winning 26-10 in a game that never felt like they were in danger of losing. The Panthers could be one of the league’s worst teams, so a dominant win was the expectation.
With a chance to start 2-0 for the first time since 2018, the Jaguars head to Cincinnati (1-0) on Sunday as a 3.5-point underdog with some real momentum. A win over the Joe Burrow-powered Bengals would put Jacksonville in a position of confidence heading into their AFC South opener against the Texans in Week 3.
Head coach Liam Coen knows Cincinnati will be a significant challenge for the coaching staff, especially on the defensive side of the ball. First-year coordinator Al Golden’s unit held Cleveland to 16 points in a Week 1 win. Golden was the defensive coordinator at Notre Dame last year and hasn’t revealed much in just one game in the NFL. Coen said he even picked rookie linebacker Jack Kiser’s brain on some of Golden’s tendencies this week. Kiser played for Golden at Notre Dame.
“You don’t really have a ton of evidence from Cleveland this past week,” Coen said. “So, we’ve had to dive into it, which does make it challenging for sure, where there’s just an unknown, almost like going back into a week one game a little bit where you’re like, we could definitely see some unscouted looks here, some things that we did not see from last week.”
Jacksonville played physical football against Carolina, especially on the offensive line and in the back seven. The Jaguars forced three turnovers (after just nine last year) and cleared the way for a 200-yard rushing day. Trevor Lawrence wasn’t sacked and was seldom even pressured.
Coen wants that physicality week in and week out but knows it will be difficult to do through a 17-game season.
“It’s definitely an expectation. It’s something that we have preached and talked about pretty relentlessly,” Coen said. “So, you’re hoping that that’s becoming a part of your DNA and a part of your identity, but I think in the NFL with the amount of games that these guys play, it’s definitely challenging to go out and do it week in and week out.”
Jacksonville needs to not only play physical, but it needs to play balanced football. The ground game led the way against Carolina, with Travis Etienne racking up 143 yards on 16 carries. Coen’s biggest accomplishment in Tampa Bay last year was his ability to completely revamp the ground game. One game against a bad team isn’t exactly proof that he’s done the same thing in Jacksonville, but it was an excellent start.
“We all want balance, to say that you’re going to execute perfect balance each week is why the defensive guys get paid. So, that’s where the balance though comes in to create is once we get good at both, well, if they’re stopping one, you get to deploy the other and still have success,” Coen said. “Within a game, you want to sit there and say, yes, we rushed for 200 yards and we threw for 225 a game.
Lawrence had a solid game but needs to play better, especially if the ground game is hemmed in.
“I think it’s a start. It’s never a finished product. Every week is a different week. It’s a different challenge. We did our job Sunday, we got the win, we executed fairly well,” Lawrence said. “Still a lot of things to clean up, like we talked about penalties and getting ourselves in some bad situations but as far as when we ran a play and we didn’t have a penalty, we were pretty good, we executed pretty well and we were on the same page.”