JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Soak it in. Bask in the moment. Appreciate it. Enjoy it. Believe it.
The Jaguars are one of the NFL’s best teams, and they’re headed to the playoffs on a tear.
Recommended Videos
Jacksonville put the exclamation point on a sterling regular season Sunday afternoon, blasting the rival Titans 41-7 at EverBank Stadium to wrap up the AFC South title in what has been a storybook season for the ages for the long-suffering fanbase.
Trevor Lawrence continued his blistering stretch, throwing three touchdowns and setting the team record for the most TDs in a season (38). Kicker Cam Little blasted the second-longest field goal in NFL history, a 67-yarder to end the first half that joins his 68-yarder at Las Vegas for the longest two field goals ever.
But those were footnotes to the biggest news in Duval in what feels like an eternity.
Jacksonville is in the playoffs for just the third time in the past 18 years and will host the Bills (12-5) on Sunday at 1 p.m.
“I’m very proud of this group, the resilience, the resiliency of this group, the mental toughness of this group,” said head coach Liam Coen. “Obviously started a little bit hot in ways and then had a tough stretch. You’re up 20 in the fourth quarter [against the Texans} and end up losing a game, and then to turn this thing around, and for these guys to stay the course, keep allowing us to keep coaching, they’re a fun, special group to be around.”
And Coen will be around them a bit longer.
The 13 wins are the second-most in franchise history, behind only the 14-2 mark of the 1999 team that went to the AFC championship game.
Outside of Jacksonville’s out-of-nowhere run to the AFC championship game in their second year of existence in 1996, this is perhaps the most stunning season in the team’s 31-year history.
Coen inherited a 13-loss team that had fallen into the cellar under Doug Pederson, and flipped it into just the third in NFL history to win 13 games a season after losing 13 (the 1998-99 Colts and the 2024-25 Patriots are the others).
The renaissance stretches beyond just Coen, who had never been a head coach at any level before coming to Jacksonville.
They have first-time coordinators in Anthony Campanile and Grant Udinski, a 35-year-old first-time general manager (James Gladstone), and an EVP (Tony Boselli) who is in his first season in any type of executive role.
“Tony and James and I, … it’s a pretty cool relationship,“ Coen said. ”It obviously goes beyond just a working friendship. I can’t thank them enough for their support. We truly do itall together. That’s the cool part. Everything we do, every decision we make, is together, is a group effort."
Jacksonville needed that hard reset. The Jaguars went 5-18 during Pederson’s last season and a half in town. Lawrence looked broken at times in Pederson and Press Taylor’s system, and the defense was an absolute sieve. The coaching staff has remade things quickly.
Coen and Udinski were hired to maximize Lawrence’s ability, hailed as generational when he was the No. 1 pick in the 2021 draft, and they have done just that. After an up-and-down, 5-4 start under Coen, it has finally clicked for Lawrence.
He’s been among the best players in the NFL during Jacksonville’s eight-game winning streak (19 passing TDs, 5 rushing TDs), including a six-TD game against the Jets last month. And Lawrence hasn’t just feasted on bad teams in that stretch. He’s beaten the Colts twice, went on the road to beat the AFC-leading Broncos, and also picked apart the playoff-bound Chargers.
“We’re definitely appreciative of the fact that it’s not easy to do, especially when you look at our division and the teams that are playing well and the competition. So definitely proud of that. We know there’s more for us,” Lawrence said. “It doesn’t stop here. We’ve put in all this work to get here. Let’s not let it go to waste. We’ve got a big opportunity this week.”
Against the Titans, Lawrence was again, very, very good.
He threaded a 23-yard touchdown pass to Parker Washington to tie things at 7-all midway through the opening quarter, then hit a wide-open Brenton Strange in the end zone for a 7-yard touchdown, and a 14-7 lead, early in the second quarter. Lawrence’s third scoring pass of the half came on a 5-yard out to Quentin Morris that pushed the lead to 28-7. That touchdown, the 38th of the season, pushed Lawrence past Blake Bortles for the most in a year. Bortles had 37 in 2015.
“It means everything to us. We want to be here. We want the city to be proud,” Strange said. “We want the city to be here next week. We want them to show up and be loud and be quiet when our offense is on the field. It means everything. We want you guys to be proud of this team and organization.”
Lawrence has thrown 29 touchdown passes and rushed for nine more, the highest totals of his career. He finished 22 of 30 for 255 yards against Tennessee, leaving the game after hitting Washington for a 23-yard gain that pushed him over 4,000 passing yards on the season.
Long before that point, it felt over for the Titans.
Tennessee rookie quarterback Cam Ward injured his shoulder on a 1-yard touchdown run on the opening drive of the game and didn’t return. With Ward, the Titans had a better chance to bang with the Jaguars. But backup Brandon Allen, a sixth-round pick of the Jaguars back in 2016, wasn’t going to do much against that defense. Antonio Johnson had a 42-yard pick-six for the Jaguars that pushed Jacksonville in front 21-7 early in the second quarter, and that all but turned out the lights for the Titans.
That interception was the 22nd of the season, a franchise record.
Little continued his remarkable second season. After the Titans failed on a long fourth-down pass, it left Jacksonville with 3 seconds left and a 67-yard field goal try. Little, who hit a 70-yard field goal in a preseason game, and booted an NFL-record 68-yard kick in an OT win over the Raiders this year, left no doubt about it.
Little said he’s not surprised by the turnaround after last year’s four-win disaster.
“I can, because I know the talent and I know what we are capable of in this room,” he said.
“We have the talent, we have guys that care about the game, we have guys that do the right things all the time from the top down. To know that all this hard work and all these guys and the talent levels that they’re playing at is paying off, it’s not a surprise to me because I saw it built up in the offseason, I’ve seen it built up since I’ve been here.”