JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The stories are true about Liam Coen. He was drawing the wishbone at four years old.
“It was a little chicken scratchy, but there were 11 (players) on the grass,” the new Jacksonville Jaguars head coach told Action Sports Jax Sports Director Brent Martineau on Monday.
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Coen sat down with Action Sports Jax less than an hour after being introduced to Jacksonville as the eighth head coach in team history.
The Rhode Island native is the first from the Ocean State to be a head coach in the NFL, but this was always the destination.
“This sounds different, but I knew at a young age,” Coen said. “You always talk about dreams and seeing it and how I want it to look like, but this is what I saw.”
It’s been a climb for Coen. He was 44-2 at LaSalle Academy in high school, winning a couple of state championships.
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He was a record-breaking quarterback at UMass. He had coaching stops at UMass, Rhode Island, Brown University, and Maine before finding his way to the Los Angeles Rams and the NFL.
Coen’s most recent job in Tampa as the offensive coordinator of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers was his fifth mailing address in the last four years. Now, he’s got a sixth one across the state here in Jacksonville.
“This hasn’t been the easiest,” Coen said. “I didn’t just land on third base with a great GA job at Florida, but just that’s the way it goes. I think that’s what has made it special.”
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Coen’s prowess with quarterbacks landed him this dream job opportunity with the Jaguars. His next task will be to get franchise quarterback Trevor Lawrence to find consistent play and reach his ceiling. Lawrence is coming off two injury-shortened seasons, but he’s only 25 years old.
“This league is still about scoring,” Coen said. “It’s about quarterback development and scoring points. It’s so much about Trevor. How do we make his job easier? He’s the future of our organization. He wants the responsibility, but we have to help him.”
Now, Coen gets to draw up “football plays” for the Jacksonville Jaguars. The handwriting is probably a little better at 39 years old, but his love for the game and passion hasn’t changed.
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