JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Anton Harrison loved it. It was just what an offensive lineman wanted to hear.
New head coach Liam Coen wanted the Jaguars line to set the tone for the offense, something that made Harrison a believer right from the outset.
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“From day one, Liam came in and told the O-line, ‘the offense is going to run through us.’ And as an O-line, you want that. You want to have a team, the offense on your shoulders,” said Harrison, the team’s fourth-year right tackle.
“You want to lead the offense. So, we took that to heart. We wanted to lead the offense through us and that starts running the ball, being the most dominant group on the field. So, if we could do that every game, we could win every game.”
The Jaguars offensive line has been one of the league’s most under-respected units for years. Pro Football Focus had Jacksonville’s line ranked as the 26th best entering the 2025 season. Harrison, Jacksonville’s first-round pick in 2023, graded out at 64.2 by the PFF metrics, a mark that put him below average among offensive tackles.
Enter Coen and offensive line coach Shaun Sarrett.
The Jaguars signed Robert Hainsey, Patrick Mekari and Chuma Edoga in free agency. They drafted Wyatt Milum and Jonah Monheim. And returning veterans Cole Van Lanen and Ezra Cleveland both elevated their games to help the Jaguars bolster that unit.
Harrison followed with the best season of his career, boosting his overall PFF grade to a 71.4 (34th out of 89 players) and allowing just one sack for the 13-4 Jaguars.
He said the Jaguars took that perceived disrespect in stride and did the dirty work in silence, crunching and analyzing film to get better and better.
“It’s always fun to prove somebody wrong, but inside the building, we try not to look at that, the outside noise. We try not to worry about that stuff. We know what we got, we know what we can do,” Harrison said. “Definitely [noticed it]. Obviously, as a competitor, you see things like that, and you just want to prove everybody wrong. So, it definitely puts a little fuel under the fire.”
Coen arrived in Jacksonville with no head coaching experience but a resume of doing big things on offense. The key to getting the Jaguars to make big gains quickly was to unlock quarterback Trevor Lawrence’s limitless potential. Lawrence’s growth had stagnated under two previous coaching regimes (Urban Meyer, Doug Pederson), and Coen was seen as the one to help get him to franchise savior level.
Only it wasn’t all about Lawrence. Not at all.
Coen’s work with the Buccaneers revolved around the offensive line and getting that group to absolutely crush it in the ground game. Tampa Bay’s rushing attack went from the 32nd-ranked unit the year before Coen arrived in 2023 (88.8 ypg) to the No. 4 unit (149.2 ypg) in 2024. That allowed quarterback Baker Mayfield to take another huge jump in his development.
The Jaguars didn’t make as significant of a statistical jump (26th to 20th) but averaged nearly 15 more yards rushing on the ground in Coen’s first season. Lawrence was an MVP finalist. Harrison expects things to be better in the second season of Coen’s system.
“Some learning curves, a new system, terminology, things like that. But at the end of the day, it’s football, especially at our position. It’s not too many things you can do,” Harrison said. “We ain’t running routes and things like that. So, we just got to beat the guy across from us. And us as the O-line, I feel like we played good together. We had good chemistry and we’re together again. So, we got another year to grow on that.”
Anchor of the line
Coen said the team would explore getting Harrison some reps at left tackle during camp, but that hasn’t been a major priority at this point of the offseason program.
“It’s something that you don’t want to mess with too much unless you’re going to make a change. But just also trying to get him—it’s OTA No. 4, so we’re just trying to get a little bit more of that continuity and chemistry back before doing that,” Coen said. “And look, if that was something he was super like, ‘Man, I want to go play left, this is where I see myself as a player,’ that would probably push us more in that direction.”
Harrison is no doubt the anchor of Jacksonville’s line. The team picked up his fifth-year option and will almost certainly try and sign the Oklahoma University product to a contract extension, talks that Harrison said haven’t started yet. Harrison laughed when called a veteran, something he said has taken some getting accustomed to.
“Everybody keeps saying that. Look, I’m still young. I’m only 24 years old, which is crazy,” he said. “So it’s like, I’m the vet, but I still got a lot to learn.”
Anton, the chef
Another area where Harrison continues to learn—in the kitchen. He spent hour after hour in the kitchen growing up, watching his mother and grandmother dial up dish after dish. That led to Harrison catching the cooking bug in high school and college. Harrison said he cooked all the time in college at Oklahoma.
“I sold plates [of food] just for fun,” he said. “Before NIL, I was selling meals in college. Cooking for the team and college students and things like that. That’s just the love I have [for cooking].”
Harrison’s next goal: releasing his own cookbook. He said that he’s more than halfway done with his 40-meal cookbook, and that he hopes to release it during the season.
“We got it sectioned out. ... like your Mexican food, your soul foods, your sides and things like that. I got things from oxtails, the jerk chicken, like from scratch making the jerk marinade, things like that ... all the way to mac and cheese to candied yams,” Harrison said. “So, just top to bottom, full meal size, things like red velvet banana pudding, just everything.”