Jaguars: Can Last Year’s Surprise Actually Become This Year’s Standard?

A year ago, nobody outside of Jacksonville was penciling the Jaguars in as AFC South champions. Liam Coen was a first-year head coach. Trevor Lawrence had spent most of his career looking like a promising quarterback who couldn’t quite put it all together. The offense was unproven in Coen’s system, and the division felt wide open in the most unpredictable way possible.

Then Jacksonville went 13-4, won the division title for the first time since 2022, and Lawrence finished as an MVP finalist after one of the best stretches of quarterback play anyone had seen from him in five seasons. It was a genuine, legitimate breakout, not a fluke built on a soft schedule or fortunate injury luck.

Now comes the hard part.

Coen himself has been remarkably candid about what this offseason actually looks like for him. He said publicly that his job heading into 2026 is to find and fix what he calls “the stink,” the problems that got covered up by 13 wins last year. The run game was one of the biggest ones. Yards per game and yards per carry both dropped sharply in the final six weeks of the regular season, and the team’s lead back from last year, Travis Etienne, is gone.

Etienne’s departure is the most significant roster loss Jacksonville absorbed this offseason. He rushed for 1,107 yards on 260 carries last season, the third-most in franchise history over his career. He signed with the New Orleans Saints in free agency, and the Jaguars didn’t replace him with anyone of comparable profile.

Instead, they’re going with a committee. Bhayshul Tuten, a sophomore back who showed real promise as a rookie with 307 yards and five touchdowns, is expected to take on the largest role. Chris Rodriguez, signed from Washington where he posted 920 yards and 10 touchdowns over three seasons, is also in the mix, though he’s currently recovering from foot surgery and missed the entire offseason program. LeQuint Allen figures to contribute primarily in passing situations. Coen himself has called the backfield competition “wide open.”

That’s not exactly a reassuring phrase when you’re trying to establish a more consistent run game than the one that sputtered late last season.

The passing game is where the real optimism lives, and it’s genuine. Lawrence looked like an entirely different quarterback over the final ten weeks of 2025, and the early returns from OTAs and minicamp have been encouraging. Reporters watching practice have noted his improved accuracy downfield and clean decision-making. Lawrence himself says this is the best he’s felt entering a season since entering the league.

Brian Thomas Jr. is the wild card here. As a rookie, he was outstanding, catching 82 passes for 1,282 yards and 10 touchdowns. Last year, the offense struggled when Coen tried to run everything through him early, and things only clicked when Thomas became one option among several rather than the focal point. The two-way phenom Travis Hunter is expected to play primarily cornerback this year, which could limit his offensive contributions, while Parker Washington and Jakobi Myers round out a receiving corps that genuinely has the pieces to be a top-ten unit if Lawrence keeps building on what he showed last fall.

The other departure worth flagging is linebacker Devin Lloyd, who left in free agency. The defense still has real pieces in Travon Walker, Josh Hines-Allen, and a secondary that should be better with a year of experience. But losing Lloyd without a direct replacement at his level is a real subtraction on that side of the ball.

Here’s where I land on all of this. The Jaguars earned their 13-4 record last year. This wasn’t smoke and mirrors. But Coen himself is telling you there were real problems that wins covered up, and this offseason hasn’t obviously answered the biggest one, which is what this offense looks like on the ground without Etienne carrying the load.

If Lawrence takes another step forward and the run game finds even moderate consistency, Jacksonville is a legitimate contender to repeat as division champions. If the committee backfield never gels, and Thomas and Lawrence take time to find the connection that was missing for stretches of last season, this offense could look a lot more like the one that stumbled through October than the one that looked unstoppable in December.

The talent is absolutely there. The question is whether last year’s best version of this team shows up from Week 1, or whether Jacksonville has to find it all over again the hard way.