JACKSONVILLE – It's game week, and all that that implies.
Liam Coen spoke to the media on Monday, with a primary subject for the Jaguars' second-year head coach as obvious as it was urgent. The 2026 regular season is here – which means all that came before is in the past and the present is exciting, important and very much at hand.
This is the good stuff. At last.
"It just becomes more real," Coen said.
Coen spoke for about 20 minutes Monday as the Jaguars (13-4, AFC South Champions in 2025) prepared to play the Cleveland Browns (5-12) at EverBank Field Sunday at 1 p.m.
The Jaguars are 16-15 all-time in regular-season openers and have won two of their last three regular-season openers. They beat the Carolina Panthers, 26-10, in the 2025 regular-season opener – Coen's first game as head coach.
"We had a team meeting this morning and seemed like everybody was kind of chomping at the bit, ready to go," Coen said Monday. "The mood in the room was good, and they seemed pretty excited to get going."
The Jaguars played the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the preseason finale August 28, with the NFL scheduling a preseason "bye" between the end of the preseason and start of the regular season.
"So much of training camp is going against yourselves," Coen said. "You mix it in with the joints, which is great. That simulated work that we got at the joints gives you some glimpse and obviously competing against other teams and quality opponents.
"The message this morning was using all of this week, this bonus week, to our advantage – knowing what the weather's going to be like possibly on Sunday and working through it. We're practicing a little later now, so those guys have to continue to adjust to those things."
The Jaguars appeared to gain momentum as 2026 Training Camp and preseason continued, with two strong practice/game weeks against the Carolina Panthers and Buccaneers in Preseason Weeks 2 and 3.
Coen opted against playing most starters in the preseason, focusing on joint practices against the New Orleans Saints, Panthers and Buccaneers for preparation.
"You see improvement," Coen said. "Last year we saw some improvements made, whether it be individually, per the units, and obviously as a team as a whole. It just raises the standard in the way that the guys operate on a day-to-day basis."
Coen on Monday spoke extensively of a higher standard around the Jaguars as the 2026 regular-season openers approaches.
"It becomes that standard," he said. "Every day when you wake up and come in the building, like those standards, the way we operate, the way we meet, walk through practice, and then obviously go out and compete on Sundays, there just becomes a standard of the way that we do things.
"When we don't meet the standard, whether it's in a meeting or a walkthrough or a practice, it gets addressed. We can't just let it go and say, 'Well, we won 13 games last year. We can have a bad practice or we can have a bad meeting or we cannot be on the screws, whether it's in whatever setting we're in.'"
Coen said he can see an increased understanding of that idea.
"The standard of performance in the locker room has elevated to where maybe I don't always have to say, 'Hey guys, that's not the standard,''' he said. " 'This is not how we operate. This is not what we want it to look like.' They know more now in terms of the way that looks.
"The way that we come to work every day needs to be reflective of our energy and the way that we prepare. So, expectations are something that you earn in ways, but it's more so just an expectation of standards than it is truly performance and results based."
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Coen on approaching Week 1: "It's definitely a game that we have to be ready to adjust to some certain things and have some patience with but also have an attacking mindset. A lot of this game, especially in Week 1, is so much about our execution, about our guys, our team. You want to be aware of their players, aware of their game records and some of the things that they do. But it's so much more about our team, our execution, our effort, and our ability to respond to whatever does occur, both positive and negative."
