In just his first season as the head coach for the Jacksonville Jaguars, Liam Coen has done an incredible job. No one in the NFL has been able to deny that. He took a struggling franchise and turned it into a legitimate contender, one that made the postseason and is poised to make it even further next season.
Under Coen's leadership, the Jaguars went from 4-13 in 2024 to 13-4 last year. Yes, the Jags lost in the Wild Card round of the playoffs, but fans are largely optimistic about the future, and it isn't hard to see why.
Coen's success with the Jaguars is literally historic. He is the only first-year head coach ever to take a team with four or fewer wins and turn it into one with 12 or more wins. It's no surprise that there has been Coach of the Year buzz surrounding him for months, and now, it's official.
Liam Coen’s Jaguars breakthrough just earned him a major NFL honor
The finalists for the 2025 NFL Coach of the Year award have been announced, and Coen is one of the five to make the cut. The other nominees are fairly predictable: the Patriots' Mike Vrabel, the 49ers' Kyle Shanahan, the Seahawks' Mike Macdonald, and the Bears' Ben Johnson.
Coen has been consistently overlooked this season, despite having accomplished so much in his first year. He set multiple franchise records, had the best run defense in the league, oversaw a high-performing offense, and led the Jaguars to become the only team in NFL history to have 30-plus takeaways one year after having fewer than 10 the previous season.
Of course, it will be an uphill battle; three of the other nominees are still in the playoffs. But Coen has done something special with the Jaguars, even if the rest of the league doesn't necessarily recognize it.
The Jags were 5-4 and lost in spectacular fashion to the Houston Texans; it was, in a word, humiliating. And yet Jacksonville came back to win eight straight games, win their division, and earn home-field advantage in the playoffs. They also did it all without having a historically easy schedule to contend with.
It's assumed that the only two real candidates are Coen and Vrabel, and time will tell how the Patriots fare through the rest of the offseason; they still have to beat the Denver Broncos to make it to the Super Bowl, and — to go with the ridiculously easy wins New England has been granted all season long — they won't have to take on Bo Nix in the process.
Coen wasn't handed an easy path to the playoffs, and Vrabel's run hasn't been as impressive (or as historic) as Coen's. The league should recognize everything Coen has accomplished, and if they don't? It'll just be more revenge fuel for next season.