Jacksonville Jaguars coach Liam Coen spoke to the media on April 20 at the Miller Electric Center, the first day of the team’s Phase One of voluntary off-season workouts.
Among the highlights of Coen’s availability:
Liam Coen on getting the season started
“You’re kind of chomping at the bit … after you go to the owners’ meetings, it gets a little bit more competitive and ready to go. That’s how important is this time of year … build the foundation and team, start to get the locker room together. That’s huge. I mentioned that this morning to the guys that we have to attack our relationships, the communication, the way that we operate with each other on a day-to-day basis, because there’s, there are new faces. There’s a lot of familiarity, great continuity, which is awesome, but we have to attack our relationships and the way that we approach every single day at a high clip for us to be able to go where we want to go.”
Liam Coen on the goals of Phase One
“That’s the beauty of this time. That’s the beauty of it’s not really like we’re judging every single thing for competition on the depth chart, and we’re trying to compete in everything we do, but it’s so much more about learning the toolbox … we can maybe move forward past lining up, right? We can get into some of the details in the toolbox kit for these players so we can go and take them in our next game, in this organization’s game, to the next level.”
Liam Coen on the trade of DT Maason Smith
“I have a lot of respect for Maason … I hope he has a heck of a career. He did nothing but what we asked him to do, from a work ethic standpoint, from doing the right things and what we asked of him. It just felt like we had an opportunity to potentially get an ascending player [Ruke Orhorhoro] that can provide a little bit in the rush. It’s hard to find big men that can move like that on the interior party or defense without giving up in the run game.”
Liam Coen on the rehabs of Travis Hunter and Cole Van Lanen
“I don’t have exact timelines on some of those guys. I think obviously Travis, Cole, like those guys, aren’t going to be probably doing too much throughout the offseason program, like with the in terms of practice. They’ll be doing a lot of rehab, getting on the side, being able to utilize some of the virtual meeting room downstairs, to get some mental reps in there. That’s a way that we can kind of facilitate some of the reps that they’re missing.”
Liam Coen on where the offense can improve
“I think explosives [plays] versus negatives. How many negative plays do you have per game versus explosives per game? That’s something we’re always looking at. It’s hard to execute 10, 11, 12 play drives without something bad happening or a negative play occurring, and what a negative play actually does to a drive. Then also improvement in situational football, specifically third down on offense and defense, and also in the red zone on both offense and defense, in terms of scoring touchdowns versus not allowing your opponent to score touchdowns.”
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Liam Coen has one major improvement in mind for Jaguars offense
Reporting by Garry Smits, Jacksonville Florida Times-Union / Florida Times-Union
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
